Turning Crimson
by Tsukiko hoshino
Summary: She's out to catch killers, he's trying to not get caught and somewhere in-between he found himself doing things he absolutely shouldn't and normally wouldn't. People like him were supposed to be incapable of love but when he's with her Sasori feels the most human he has in forever, for better or worse. The only question is how it will end.
1. The Board Is Set

_The ground was wet beneath her feet, mud squelching between her toes as she sprinted. There was no light but what the night sky gave and it isn't much as the tree branches grasped and clawed at her. Sakura knew those woods. Had her whole life, but they have never seemed so dark before._

_Her heart was beating in her throat in a way that made it ache_  
_She wants to scream for the retreating figure to stop, to stay but the pace she'd set made it impossible._

_When he's finally close enough to grasp her hands looked so much smaller than she remembered stretching into the unbreachable gap between them. When she thought she had him Sakura's foot snagged, yanking her to the ground._

_The world tilted, her face was on a crash course to meet the earth but its not a leaf and dirt strewn surface that fills her sight but pale, grasping hands reaching for her eyes, the one clenching her leg felt like it was wrapped in thorns. Sakura flinched in the dream and the world broke, her body jerking with the force of her phantom fall._

Even through her rapid breathing and the feel of the cold sweat breaking out she felt the sharp claws raking into the skin of her calf. "Yurei!" Sakura hissed, eyes thrown open as the creature beneath the covers yowled angrily until she whipped them back to free the cat below. The white feline dropped to the floor, tail twitching as she stared up at the human above, judgement in her celadon eyes.

"Sorry."

The cat mewled indifferently, gave Sakura her back and slunk through the open bedroom door and into the dark.

'Can't exactly blame her for clawing me up.' Sakura was so restless in her sleep the fitted sheet was ripped off the edges of the bed. Glancing at the clock by her she sighed. 'Another night with four hours of sleep.' It was beginning to wear on her but there was no point in trying to catch a few hours more, she'd just lay awake.

She took her time getting ready for the day, made herself some coffee with tons of sugar and cream as she'd come to favor it. Took a shower, dressed in a skirt and blouse-because pantsuits just did not look good on her and dried her shoulder length hair before having more coffee.

Breakfast was as bad a usual considering the only things she could cook were rice-with the aid of a rice cooker, eggs and a particular type of cookie that her mother had been fond of making. 'Also instant miso.' but even a four year old could do that. She could almost hear her mother sighing from the Butsudan in the other room, it wouldn't matter how many years passed Sakura would always remember the sound of _that_ particular exasperation. (1)

Looking at her on the surface people would say she was smart and ambitious-she was. Enough so that she skipped grades to get into college early, landing degrees in Criminology and Psychology by the time she was 23 instead of somewhere in her 30's. It helped that Sakura was running on the delightful feeling that came with proving the world wrong and something that felt like desperation.

She _would_ have finished a year earlier if she hadn't filled her first semester with a bunch of medical courses still unsure of the path she wanted to take. 'Maybe I should have continued with it.' at least as a doctor she wouldn't always be staring down at the remnants of a person. The dream came back to her for a second, the dread of it weighing at her.

By the time she was 25 Sakura had been poached by the Konoha Intelligence Division-a state department about as old as the country itself. She'd passed the courses and rigorous physical training to be placed in the field. 'And by "_field_" it was mostly just desk work, looking through files and writing up hypothetical profiles on cases I only saw through pictures and words.'

Until about five months ago. Apparently someone higher up on the totem liked what they were reviewing because soon after she was out of the office and into the mud.

Nothing, no cadaver in a pristine morgue, no amount of pictures or lectures or veteran anecdotes could have prepared her for seeing her first body. Blue-gray skin, milky grey eyes staring vacantly towards the heavens. The smell and the look seared into the back of her brain forever. If that weren't bad enough it was a _kid. _'One who reminds me of someone I knew forever ago.' A person who went missing right after his brother slaughtered their whole family.

Between the memories of the past weighing on her and the future Sakura predicted would soon repeat, It was not surprising that the nightmares started. 'I'm just surprised at the...intensity.' and the frequency. She hadn't dreamed so vividly since she was a kid.

Maybe she would be able to sleep if she just caught the person responsible but there was no telling how long that would actually take. 'And with every day that passes, the chances of there being another dead kid goes up.' It was a sick reality that with another kill would come another clue.

She fed Yurei by the time the clock hit seven, struggled a bit to find the match to her shoe, gathered the rest of her things and started the hour long drive to headquarters. It was nice living almost in the middle of nowhere but once she hit city traffic her patience always waned. (2)

Intelligence Division Headquarters was a behemoth of glass and steel with many other smaller detached complexes. Shino once compared it to a beehive and Sakura couldn't really disagree with the upcoming entomologist. It was busy and constantly a buzz with something.

The main building had more levels then she'd ever seen but the place she was headed was in one of the older buildings, on a level where no natural sunlight reached. 'I guess it makes sense for it to be in the dark considering what we deal with.' her I.D let her through the doors after a brief check in with security.

"Morning." Yamato greeted as she took her place at the desk across from him.

"At least you didn't say it was good." Sakura grinned, dropping into her seat and settling in-flipping straight to the case that was causing her no small amount of frustration.

"Well, I didn't think it would be appropriate." The older man smiled fondly, his desk was immaculate compared to her own.

The nice thing about Yamato was that he knew not to say everything he was thinking. Even if Sakura had a pretty good idea of what it was. 'Something along the lines of; 'You look like shit' and I can't even deny it.' even concealer couldn't hide the dark marks ringing her eyes these days. 'Whatever, I'll worry about how I look after I make a break.'

Sakura focused on the photos below, propping her chin into her hand. She's already looked at them a million times but she still feels the same as she did the first time she looked. 'Sad.' and it's wasn't just the fact that there were two dead children that brought that feeling. It's the way that they were dead.

Abandoned by waterways, hands missing, slit necks and bodies bound in Shimenawa rope. So far the two that had been found looked the same. Males ages 8-10, pale skin, dark-haired, and dark-eyed. They all came from troubled homes where a quick report of their missing status would be neglected. 'Going from one horrible place to another.' Sakura chewed at her pen ignoring the way Yamato's forehead wrinkled at it. (3)

'There is damage thats consistent with sexual abuse but the bruises are old enough that they could be before abduction, or shortly after. They were held long enough that they were healing.' If the killer wasn't responsible for those damages then it completely changed the motives for the murder.

'Inoue Itsuki wasn't found until 10 days _after _he was reported missing. Kimura Hibine was discovered sooner, 3 days after death but he spent about a week missing.' To Sakura that meant the victims had about a week or less of captivity to live. 'So what the hell are they doing for that period of time? Where were they being held?' They weren't found particularly close to one another.

She didn't even need the file to recite the facts but if she just stared off into empty space someone might start to worry and start asking questions. 'Or they'll just silently speculate.' She was new, she was young and people were curious like Sakura was some kind of oddity.

At some point, Sakura must have drifted off a bit despite the caffeine she'd consumed. The dream began stretching into her mind again, the dark swallowing her world up from behind her eyelids. She tried to cling to it until the end but even if she could have grasped it she couldn't hold it, a hand shaking her from the stupor.

"Sakura."

Dark eyes and short hair filled her vision. For a moment Sakura was reminded of the victims, but shook the thought away. Shizune's face was older and clearly feminene. "Sorry, what?"

The older woman tsked fondly. "Take a walk with me? I'll buy you coffee."

Well, Sakura wasn't going to pass that up even if taking a_ walk_ felt more like being taken out of the classroom by the teacher, curious eyes following as they made their way out of the building and into the courtyard. She bit back the urge to ask if she'd done something wrong. "You can buy me a pastry too." She'd skipped lunch and was starting to feel it.

"Alright." Shizune glanced at the people who couldn't even pretend to be uninterested with annoyance.

A 15 minute walk across campus got them to the little kiosk cafe that was licensed to operate on the grounds. Most of it was spent with benign banter about Sakura's caffeine addiction, especially after Sakura dumped about 6 packets of sugar into her drink.

"I won't play mind games with you. To put it simply, I'm worried. Kakashi is getting worried. This job isn't easy for anyone, especially for someone so young."Shizune explained, 'There is nothing wrong with being inexperienced, no one ever got to be the opposite by being coddled.' But there was a lot of curiosity regarding how Sakura would cope with things, how she would adapt and be shaped by her experiences.

It was like they were waiting to see if she would crumble. There was nothing in the young woman's screenings that suggested she was fragile by any means, but it didn't stop anyone from assuming the thin line between genius and insanity was easily crossed.

As the resident counselor Shizune knew about the gossip and speculation by others within her profession on campus and off. 'Sakura was one of the hot-topics in the capital as soon as word got out that they were accepting her as a full agent-not a trainee or student at her age.'

The average age for that was around 31 and Sakura made it at 25-the youngest so far. 'And she's a woman.' Which made her something twice as rare.

It was because Shizune liked Sakura that she was essentially taking the girl under her wing, she refused to engage in any of it. It was why she was solidly refusing to poke at her head like some science project to see what would pour out.

It felt wrong for her to try and psychoanalyze her so Shizune wouldn't do it and Kakashi would not press the issue until Sakura was at the edge of breaking because that was the way he had been forged. 'I won't take that risk though. So before things get too bad lets see if we can cut it off at the pass.'

Sakura sighed dropping into a nearby bench after the coffee cup and pastry were safely in hand. "I'm okay." mostly at least. The lack of sleep and the feeling of an impending crisis hanging over her head weren't great but she didn't feel hopeless-not yet.

"For now." Shizune settled in beside her. "And_ now_ is great but being okay _tomorrow_ is just as important." she held up a hand before Sakura could interject. "I don't want to be in your head and you don't want me there. I respect that. Which is why I am suggesting someone you're unaffiliated with." A person who owed Shizune a favor and was sufficiently discreet. No one would have any luck prying something out of him.

The sugary apples in her pastry couldn't cover her distaste. "Kakashi knows about this?" she didn't need Shizune's nod-because of course her senior knew.

"He has and he's left it to you to decide. You don't have to go, but _I_ would feel better if you did. For now it's just a simple evaluation, maybe you'll see the value of continuing after you meet Dr. Akasuna." The thing about Sasori was that depending on the person he could be a bit... 'grating.' Shizune mused.

That man could be rather_ direct_ about things but he wasn't without redeeming qualities. 'I think it will be a good fit for her.' Sakura needed someone who could get her off her guard or so Shizune had decided.

The aforementioned woman leaned her head back against the bench with a sigh. "When, where?" better to get it done with rather than arguing and it wasn't like things could get any worse.

"Oh, I'm glad you said yes!" Shizune had been pretty sure she was going to get a no, but she reached into her purse and produced a card. "Later today. Call ahead if you have to cancel. Just don't be late or a no show. He hates that." Checking the time she excused herself, due for some appointments of her own.

Scowling at the card Sakura held it up to the light. There was an art to business cards, in the font and color schemes-logos if they had them. The one between her thumb and index was no different. The Kanji were red and sharp in their embossment set on a background of dark grey. It looked austere but stylish.

'Oh, I know this district.' It was about 30 minutes from headquarters, in one of the more uppercrust parts of town. 'Artsy.' She thought, tucking the card into her breast pocket as she took another long drawl of her drink. "Well, back to it." the trip back felt longer and by the time she got through the doors she could see Kakashi hanging over her desk.

"I take it Shizune talked to you?" His head was bent, looking through her notes casually.

"Yes." Sakura huffed and slapped Kakashi's hands away. "You can't make a mess just because you're the boss." She had a nice system going on, everything was where _she_ could find it. Even if it looked messy.

"Mean." He rubbed his smarting hands. "So what's the working theory? Any updates?" He always preferred to hear in person rather than off a screen or paper. Kakashi found it quicker.

"It could be religious." Between the Shimenawa rope and the watery locations it definitely came off as something almost sacrificial. "Statistically it's probably a man but I wouldn't rule out a woman." So far it sounded beyond broad and utterly useless. It made her _feel_ useless.

"Why?" It was impossible to tell what Kakashi's mouth was doing under the medical mask he claimed to wear for allergies, so Sakura had to read him by the eyebrows-or rather_ eyebrow._

Right now the single brow was telling her nothing useful. "Because it's hard to infer anything with the state of decomposition. The birds and the worms have already set in by the time they've been found. Their stomachs were already…" bloated, rotting. It was impossible to tell what they had last eaten. "But tomorrow I am going to speak with a shinto priest, see if he can tell me something I don't know."

"I see." Kakashi patted her head in a way that had her cheeks puffing up. He didn't mean anything by it having known her long before she was Agent Haruno but it was still embarrassing.

"You're so uncool." Sakura scowled. 'You're making me look like a baby.'

"You used to think I was the best."

Yamato rolled his eyes, fingers pausing over his archaic keyboard.

"I was 10 and mistaken for five minutes. Go be professional or something and by professional I don't mean reading dirty books in your office!" Sakura called after the slouching man when he finally wandered away from his desk. She might have been annoyed if she didn't know Kakashi as well as she did. He was just trying to be comforting in his own weird way.

"Sakura, you really ought to get some sleep." Yamato said at last, having broken the silence she'd appreciate from him for weeks.

Sakura dropped her head to the desk. "_Thanks_." it felt like a ringing indictment on her abilities.

The rest of the day went by as uneventfully as she expected, no sudden stroke of genius lanced through her. She packed the notes she'd been scribbling through, full of theories and conjectures into her bag and made her way across town to meet the doctor she wasn't sure she needed just yet.

Sakura ended up with a bit of time before five and stopped to buy another smaller cup of coffee and some melon pan 'Alright, it's not healthy but I need the sugar.' her hands were starting to shake from the caffeine but it was a small price to pay for the feeling that followed after drinking it. She felt more present, more aware even as her eyes stung.

The building that corresponded to the address was an old brick one on the opposite side of the street, set away from everything else with a few well maintained trees boxing it in. She let herself through the door, following the posted directions guiding her down the hall where a few empty seats were stationed.

It felt empty even though there were a few paintings on the wall. Some were in the eastern style, her eyes focused on the reproduction of Minowa, Kanasugi and Mikawashima. The crane's yellow eye stared back, form permanently frozen into a dive.

'It's a bit weird that there is no receptionist here, how does he know when anyone's showed up?' Sakura thought, tearing open the wrapper of her not-quite-dinner meal. By the time the bread was gone and the coffee half drunk the office door swung open drawing her attention with a start.A man with long blond hair and ripped black clothes sauntered out waving his hands carelessly. "See you next week my man Sasori, yeah." It wasn't a question but a statement and he was loud.

"Its Doctor." A smoother, more sedate voice still out of sight corrected. "Leave already. I have another appointment."

The blonde turned his head towards Sakura. "Oh yea, you do." he snickered. "Good luck lady." and he was gone in a few long strides, fidgety hands stuffed into his pockets.

'Nothing foreboding about that.' she thought, taking a sip of her drink. 'He kinda looked like Ino.' but in a darker color pallet. Sakura spent a moment calculating and guessed by the time her appointment was over she might make it home by seven-if she was lucky.

"There's no outside food or drink allowed in the office." The speaker was finally in sight, leaning in the doorway. He wasn't very tall but the lean lines of his suit spoke of an athletic build. It was his face that caught her attention in that moment, that and his hair.

Doctor Akasuna was currently looking at her empty wrapper of bread and coffee with disdain. Sharp, faintly upturned eyes with long lashes and a straight, narrow nose set between and a thin unsmiling mouth below. Somehow he managed to look bored and annoyed all at once. 'And handsome.' She guessed there were worse people to spend an hour looking at.

That hair of his was a thick, bright red; somewhere between scarlet and maroon with a clear predilection for waving just slightly-she supposed his colouring was still more natural than pink, by a hair. 'I'll bet he arranges it into artful chaos every morning.' Sakura bit back the grin. She had assumed since it was someone Shizune knew well enough that they would be...older.

'Like in their late thirties or something' but he looked closer to her age then he did Shizune's. Everything she'd gleaned in those few moments had her assuming that he was one of those yuppies who only ate organic and got a ton of botox to combat the inevitable aging process. 'I'm probably being harsh.'

"Well?" he nodded his head towards the room. "I'm waiting."

"Ah, right!" Sakura chugged the rest of the coffee and dropped it into the trash can after getting to her feet. "I'm-"

"I know who you are." And he didn't see the fuss. Her pupils were tiny pinpricks in jade colored eyes and by the faint shaking in her hands Sasori could tell she'd had more than enough caffeine for one day. 'Anymore and she'll probably have a seizure.' He'd seen death in a lot of ways but never from caffeine poisoning.

He was rude. 'Shizune should have mentioned that.' Sakura forced herself to smile. "Right then."

Sasori didn't bother shaking her hand or introducing himself. "You already know who I am, Just take a seat wherever." She wasn't very tall and she was built in the petite sort of way that it seemed impossible for her to have passed the standard physical tests the regular military grunts were expected to perform much less the more grueling ones they put the state department applicants through.

A heart shaped face framed with ridiculous pink hair and naive, tired looking green eyes. He was finding it hard to see why people were making such a fuss about her. Sasori wasn't a stranger to young brilliance or talent-he knew it intimately. A noted genius himself at 8, he just didn't see the marks of it when he looked at her.

All he sees is someone green and soft. He knew it by the look in her eyes and the way that she moved, even the perfume she wore was something sugary and sweet. Sasori felt her brush by him and shut the door.

'This place is huge. Its almost the size of our work room and I share that with like...6 other people, Kakashi not included.' Sakura was used to smaller offices. There was a veranda above them partitioning the room into two parts, top and bottom. The top was rung with shelves lined flush against the wall and full of innumerable books. The only way up or down that she could see was a wooden ladder.

Below, a silent hardwood floor covered in intricate dyed and patterned foreign rugs met her feet. There was a plum colored chaise tucked against the burgundy colored walls, across from the desk with a few drawings framed above it. 'He prefers his colors in a darker shade.' in some ways the space felt more like a museum with the curios that were spread about.

There were two more seats placed directly before the desk so she took the one to the left."Your office is nice." She offered easily.

Small talk was safe.

"I designed it myself." Sasori dropped into the seat on the right and waited for a moment, crossing his legs. When it was clear Sakura wasn't planning on offering any more words he sighed. "This would be the part where you explain why you're here." He flipped an hourglass full of red sand over and fiddled with the pen in his lapel.

"That would require me to know why." Rather, she wanted to know what _ he _ knew before she said anything. So she baited him.

Sasori's brows narrowed over his eyes. "Do you make a habit of showing up at appointments without knowing why? Sounds like a waste of time." he continued, long fingers locking over his crossed legs. "Since I hate waiting let me take an educated guess; You're very young, fresh out of the academy and you've been thrown into the fray but you're not ready and you're suffering the consequences."

The verbal blows were not withheld, stated as simple facts. It felt like he was implying she should remove herself from the case.

Her teeth clenched. "That's not it at all, I'm ready. As anyone could be!" Only a monster wouldn't be bothered by the things she saw. 'I just haven't grown callous like Yamato or Kakashi yet.' were they expecting her to be unaffected? She wasn't a veteran, just a rookie and the whole process was just a bit jarring. 'I'm frustrated and stressed but I'm not giving up.'

"Are you?" Sasori countered with a rising eyebrow and the quirk of a smirking mouth. "You're apparently barely sleeping. it's only a matter of time before the effects bleed into your work if they haven't already." he always found amusement in the worn out little lies people told themselves rather than simply confronting the problem head on.

Sakura glanced at the framed accreditations suspiciously. 'Shizune, this man really has a venomous tongue. What the hell did you get me in to?' Suddenly his pretty face didn't seem so great. Her arms crossed like a shield over her chest. "Your bedside manner sucks."

"Who would consider prodding at the mess inside a person's head nice? Of course I'm not nice." Sasori snorted, to him it sounded no different then someone crying over being given a life saving injection because it hurt. "If you're looking for a therapist who will coddle you, give you a pat on the head and a sweet after each session, There is the door...Little Girl." he threw his thumb over his shoulder.

Her eyes went wide and he could see the flash of her teeth behind a poorly hidden scowl.

'Little?' Sakura fumed, hands twitching at her side as she resisted the urge to prop them on her hips. 'You're barely taller than I am!' In the right heels she would dwarf him.

If Dr. Akasuna thought that Sakura was easily intimidated or that she shied away from challenges he was dead wrong. That familiar feeling, that drive, that _need_ flooded her veins. She hated being underestimated. Loathed being judged and found lacking. "Where should I start?" Her chin rose imperiously as she stared him dead in the eyes-unflinching.

"The part where my first case involves two dead kids? Or the part where it feels like there is a proverbial clock ticking over my head until there is a third, or a fourth?" Her nails bit into the palm of her hand. "Or how about the part where those two kids went from one bad situation to another and never got the chance to know any better?"

The doctor's sedate expression didn't change at the vehemence in her voice. She wished she could be so measured.

It wasn't fair. If they had better parents, if someone had cared they might still be alive. "Have you ever seen a dead body before? Not the clean, pristine ones at a funeral. But the ones that are fetid and swollen, the ones where the animals have had a feast?" She thinks of the birds picking at Hibine's eyes, the way Itsuki's flesh had begun to molt and her stomach turns.

'Plenty.' Mostly in his early days but his own carnage was so much cleaner. "I was a surgeon once, I worked on cadavers of varying quality. You'd be surprised at what you see...At what people can live through." he was no stranger to death but living bodies could be just as disgusting as dead ones.

Her eyes trekked over his face, trying to decipher a number she couldn't figure out. She wondered if this was how people thought about her own position; looking too young to be where she was.

"35. If you're wondering about my age, gifted and tenacious from my youth." and born in a foregin country with fewer scruples. "You must have known what you were getting yourself into when you pursued the career you did." That was what the academy was meant to do, desensitize and prepare their students.

Sakura's shoulders heaved with a sigh, expression shifting into something almost mocking-as though he'd said something ignorant. "Oh course I knew but _knowing_ something is different from _seeing_ it. From having to deal with real people and real consequences."

"You take it too personally. If you're too affected you can't be effective." maybe that's why he was so successful in his own endeavors. There were of course things he liked and those that he disliked but he couldn't think of a person whose death would bother him. For a very long time Sasori has categorized people as tolerable, expendable or things to be viewed with utter ambivalence. At least on the inside.

It always seemed odd to him how people made such a show of grieving people they didn't even know.

Her nose wrinkled at the statement. "I disagree, because I am affected I am _effective_." Her feelings had always fueled Sakura. Her dreams, her lack of sleep and the guilt gnawing at her had not changed that. Couldn't. Of course Doctor Akasuna didn't look very convinced of that.

"Right now the main issue is how you're sleeping. Have you tried medication?"

"They don't work and frankly I feel worse when I wake up the next morning than I do with a few less hours of sleep." The foggy haze they induced the rest of the day just wasn't worth it. "I get to sleep fine, it's staying there that's the problem. I don't have pleasant dreams."

He seldomly dreams, more often than not what waits for him is the velvet darkness of his eyelids and there is certainly nothing to keep him tossing in the night. Not anymore. "Oh? What do you dream of?"

"Of running in the dark." Of a face-_faces_ Sakura felt she failed, of phantom hands and accusatory eyes. 'Of something recognizable becoming twisted.'

His head tilted, red bangs whispering across his forehead. "Away or to something? There is a difference in meaning depending on what it is."

"I was running to something, I didn't make it. Even if I could it wouldn't make a difference." Those people were already lost. Her gaze slid over the room finding something to focus on. There was a carved scorpion on his desk, the stridations of the smooth wood lent itself to its lifelike quality. Whatever it was carved out of or stained in had a glossy purple-black hue, tail curled over its back as if to strike.

"Do you think they will stop after this case? Even if, or _when_ you solve it there will only be another." Ad infinitum, someone was always killing.

"I don't know." Sakura laughed, she hoped they would but even if they continued or changed it wouldn't matter. "But I'm going to find out." Her fist clenched around air. "They're going to become clearer. It's only a matter of time." She turned her attention towards him again, the lamp angled in a way that it illuminated her face like spotlight.

Well, now he was curious. "What do you know about them so far?" She seemed so sure.

"That they have a pattern-The type of victim, the ropes and the locations, the missing hands…" Her teeth worried at her bottom lip. "It doesn't mean much yet but somewhere at sometime there will be some minor detail that ties it all together. It's like...a puzzle without a picture and its missing a bunch of pieces when you begin." Sakura spoke with her hands twisting them in enigmatic ways.

A new thought sprung into her as she considered the similarities, eyes widening. "Whoever this person is, they have a compulsion-a connection they are trying to emulate. These kids remind them of someone they want to recreate." Sakura struck her fist into the palm of her hand feeling like she'd made a sudden break. 'What are they trying to replace...and the binding…'

Sasori wondered briefly what she would glean from his work, if anything. 'But then again they aren't mere bodies...They are art.' And she didn't seem the type to know anything about such a subject. He saw the sand in the hourglass had just about run out. "We're almost done, there is a bit of paperwork to do before you go." He rose and brought back a clipboard from his desk with the usual questions and disclosures that were expected.

"Ah right." Sakura filled them out rather quickly, wondering if she'd get any quality rest now that she'd had a sudden revelation. "So...how disturbed am I, Doctor?"

"Hah. Like I can tell you that from one visit." At least she had a sense of humor. He tapped a finger against his cheekbone. "You're probably coping as well as expected, all things considered." For a normal person at least. "You'd find it useful to set boundaries at home and cut back on the caffeine.' He rolled his eyes at her look of horror. "Are you planning on returning?

Sakura wasn't going to do two of those things. "Well, it's hard to tell if you're any good in _one_ visit." she countered, rising to her feet. 'And at the very least I've got to get you back for calling me Little Girl.' Next time she was going to wear the tallest heels she owned. They'd see who was little then.

Sasori was a man who liked the secrets of others-how they shaped them, how they can be manipulated by them. He's the type to listen, pretending to be uninterested in idle gossip while he tried piecing together the truth that lay in between whispers. What they said about her had been nothing of substance. 'Conjecture based on appearance and biases.' he's guilty of it himself. 'But who isn't?' Snap judgements were natural survival mechanisms.

It's only their first meeting but he wonders if there is more to see in her than what they say-A confusing mass of brilliance and fragility. 'Is she even brittle?' There is something in her gaze, the way that she speaks and moves that had him rethinking that assumption.

"Next week, same day and time then." 

* * *

(1) The Batsudan is like a miniature temple, and contains an image of Buddha. Names of a family's deceased ancestors are inscribed on tablets. It's no longer uncommon for people to place pictures of the deceased inside or little knickknacks that let those who have passed on take part in the lives of the living. It depends on how stringent a family is.

(2) This AU basically takes place in a world where you squish the Shinobi continent between China and Japan.

(3) wiki/Shimenawa

Writing Sasori is like... There are times where he is really strong in my head and then he slips away like an eel and it takes a while to fish him back up. Its /  
This is a very cerebral way of writing. Not every chapter is going to be all talking between Sasori and Sakura, but it's kind of expected since he's her psychiatrist. Sasori's version of Psychiatry is him basically roasting people outloud and in his head. Things should pick up in the next chapter.

When I began writing my original novel I did a lot of research on body decomp and uhm...when I die I'm being cremated, I cannot stress enough but if you are like squeamish I would nope out lmao. It does not get better in regards to that.

So the real question is can you figure out the Shimenawa Murders before Sakura? Is it a male or a female perpetrator? And why? I mean besides the fact that they are crazy...

Is it good, is it bad? This thing really took a lot to write, not gonna lie. So I seriously appreciate the comments, they make me feel good and that my writing this is worth while, and they also show other people that its not garbage

Me Crawling to bed at 3am :(´ཀ`」 ∠):_ …

If you see any major mistakes lemme know so I can edit after I wake up from my coma.


	2. And thou Shalt Be Second

As Sakura had predicted a third body was found in the week following her appointment, the scene reminded her of the Hiroshige print she'd seen at the doctor's office. Only there were no sleek white cranes or distant village huts down the hill.

Standing in the thrushy reeds of a creekbed she looked down at the bloodless face of Minami Kazuo, found much earlier than his predecessors and looking about as clean as the recently deceased got. Dressed in his stark white, bloodless yukata, face upturned to the sky as though he were sleeping. Only the color of his skin and the swarming insects ruined the illusion.

To her it looked as if he'd been given his funerary rights; cleaned and washed, laid out as though he were awaiting mourners. Her eyes couldn't help but focus on the dark, gaping slice that ran the side to the front of his pale neck.

She thought back to what the Shinto priest she'd spoken to had said. That the Shimenawa could be used to attract a god or to ward away evil. 'So are they trying to manifest a god or drive something away?' She'd know more once the medical examiner finished with their work, and focused on the other thing the crimes had in common. 'Water, which in Shintoism is supposed to be a purifying force.'

The more she thought about it the less it seemed that the crimes were solely about some religious bloodlust or even zealotry. There was something poignant about the way that they were laid, ropes binding their handless arms to their sides.

'It'll take about a few days for the medical examiner to finish and forensics will take even longer.' They were already finishing the process of combing over the scene, looking for even the slightest scrap of evidence. In the meantime, Sakura had other cases on her desk she'd been neglecting in her fervor for Shimenawa. Still, she lingered watching as they loaded Kazuo's body into a too-large black bag.

She already knew what would happen with the body. They'd take it to a morgue, study its skin for every bruise and scrape for every fiber and particle they could find. Then, once the outside was well looked over they would cut and crack open the chest to examine the organs inside. 'And then they'll stitch it back up so his so-called parents can pretend to care.'

It was one of the worst parts of it all, watching people who didn't actually give a damn pretend to. 'Funny how it takes a death to uproot all the dirty little secrets people like to hide.'

Despite the fact that every victim had pages of records documenting allegations, witness statements and testimonies from the children themselves they were always placed back in the home after a week or two away. 'If that...' Kazuo had just returned home the day of his abduction only to be found a week later.

A sigh heaved from her shoulders. 'Wasting your time standing here isn't going to solve anything.' So Sakura turned and scrambled up the gully, thankful she always kept a more sensible pair of shoes and clothes tucked away in her locker. There was no way of knowing when she was going to have to go chasing someone down-or worst case scenario shooting them.

The weight of the gun holstered at her side was a constant reminder of the possibility and she was thankful that the situation had yet to arise.

In the fluorescent lights of her department, out of her muddy clothes and into something more professional Sakura scrounged around her desk-ignoring the way Yamato gave her a rather smug look, patting his own orderly desk as an example. "This is Kakashi's fault, he moved things!" his lips curved, but his gaze was no less judgmental.

Sakura paused in her search, looking over Yamato's carefully organized space and then at her own. It reminded her of how put together he seemed despite the work they shared. "So how do you like...cope with it all?" she could already feel her face shifting into a cringe.

Yamato's dark eyes slid from the photograph he had been scrutinizing, taking her face in just as analytically.

The fact of the matter was that Sakura didn't relish asking for help, the opposite in fact. She was a notorious know-it-all but she wasn't so full of pride that she would put ego before potential results.

Yamato's smiled then, something like nostalgia entering his gaze. "Its different for everyone. Hobbies help." he pointed at the bonsai he kept in a decorative dish in between their two desks. "I garden and keep Bonsai, Kakashi hoards dogs."

"He's always done that." Sakura snickered. As far back as the day she met him thirteen years ago the chronically late man had an entire pack of canines. 'He's already on Pakkun The Second.'

"And some people involve themselves in more destructive behaviors, like excessive drinking. I don't really advise that one-for obvious reasons." He didn't mention anyone by name because there were probably far too many instances to count. "You learn to mitigate the damages and set sustainable expectations."

"Sustainable expectations…" Sakura sighed, unsure of what they entailed. 'Let's just focus on finding a hobby first.' That at least should have been easy. Before she had essentially thrown herself into academic overdrive she'd read a lot. The classics, scientific journals, historical novels. Whatever she could get her hands on. 'There hasn't been a lot of time for that lately.' nor had she had the desire.

If Sakura looked just past Yamato's head, she'd see the evidence board and the three photos tacked on it like a permanent mockery of her efforts.

Shimenawa had been consuming her days and nights, even when she tried to focus on something mundane like washing rice it seemed to linger at the back of her head. Her hands filmed through the mess of papers strewn over her desk.

Her search paid off after a few long moments, the folders that were considered prospective cases were buried beneath everything else. The dossiers sent in by law enforcement agencies dotting Fire, thinking they had serial killers or serial rapists on the loose were split up around the office so everyone had a fair share

Everyone wanted to blame a Serial, it made things easier than having to hunt down 100 or so individual suspects. 'but the reality is that 9 out of 10 times it is just them making connections where there are none.'

Nothing really caught her eye until she was on the second to last one, the file was about as thick as her wrist-near bursting. There were well over fifty murders and just as many suspicious accidents documented in a variety of ways. There didn't seem to be a pattern indicative of a serial killer-except for one thing; Snakes.

In particular, a white snake found on or near the scene of the crime, it wasn't always a real one, sometimes graffiti, a small icon, they could be elaborate in nature or as crude as a squiggly line.

A frown began creeping over Sakura's face as she shuffled through pictures and dates at an alarming rate. 'It's not possible for this to be one person.' Some of the murders were on the same day with thousands of miles separating them. 'Where did this information come from?'

More than anything it was the unsettling sense of familiarity that was setting her off. "Yamato, do you know where this came from?" She questioned, hefting it up to be seen.

"Ah, that? It's like a joke around the office. That thing has been here longer than I have, which is about 10 years now. Somehow it always ends up on some newbies desk. I guess it's your turn." Yamato laughed, scrubbing a hand through his short brown hair. "You should probably just toss it into the reject pile and save yourself some time. It never goes anywhere."

Sakura blew a few strands of pink hair out of her face. 'He's probably right.' in ten years no one had picked it up, so maybe she was the one seeing _ something _ where there was nothing. 'On the other hand...there is something about this thing.' something familiar.

In the end, she dropped it into her bag to be looked over more thoroughly when she got home. It wasn't going to hurt anything if she gave it a more thorough look over in her own time. 'I mean he did say that I needed a hobby.' although he _ had _ meant something not work-related.

Before she left to attend her appointment Sakura slapped a sticky note to the out-of-office Kakashi's door detailing her intentions to return later for a few more hours of work. 'It's not like I will sleep much tonight anyway. Things are always the worst after a new body.' better that she worked herself into exhaustion than fight her overactive mind.

True to her vow the week before, she'd switched out the sensible shoes she'd been wearing for ones with more height and smoothed her properly professional skirt. When Sakura got it into her head to do something she almost always ended up following through. Stubborn didn't even begin to cover it.

She hadn't quite cut back on the coffee yet, the last dregs of her third cup lingering on her tongue as her feet hit the waiting room floor. 'It'll be a late dinner tonight.' But she'd brought a red bean bun on the way in and snacked on it, eyes moving from ever poised white cranes to an image further along the wall.

The Doctor's taste was not confined to the eastern style or even tone, going from pastoral to the macabre. Far from the ever-staring crane, four deathly figures cavorted over the grave of the fifth. 'I think I prefer the birds.' Sakura bit at the bun tersely. 'They aren't even anatomically correct.' and they looked entirely too happy with being dead. 'On the other hand if you're already dead no point in crying about it.'

"It's based off of a woodcut-Danse Macabre." Sasori did not fumble over the foreign words. "Girl, are you going to make a habit of eating here?" It meant he'd have to clean more.

Apparently Sakura had been lost in thought staring at the image-she hadn't even heard the door open-still, she managed not to choke on her food at the sound of his voice. "Probably. It's late, I haven't eaten dinner." She rose to her feet steadily, tossed the rest of her food into the trash and tried not to mourn the waste of it.

She was at least a good four inches taller than the last time Sasori saw her, enough so that Sakura could look down at him. The shoes were entirely impractical outside an office setting. "Are you a field agent or a desk jockey?" he sneered, finding her attempt at one upmanship to be juvenile.

Sakura simply smirked at him, oozing false innocence as she strode by to settle herself in the seat she'd taken last time. "Depends on the day and the circumstances. Besides, you'd be surprised at what I can do in these." The heels might have been tall and spindly but she could still sprint in them without a wobble-hell, she could probably wreck a person in them. A skill that came with a lot of practice and a few twisted ankles along the way.

"Unlikely." He disagreed, the door clicking shut under the weight of his hand. The hourglass was flipped, tiny red grains pouring against one another as they began.

"You have really eclectic taste," Sakura blurted out, prefering to drive the conversation rather than be guided. "In art I mean." she said after a moment. There was an inscrutable expression on his face for just a beat before it morphed into utter conceit.

"How so?" In reality she had no clue just how eclectic his tastes actually were but the comment did make him curious enough to wonder at the statement-even if her attempt at controlling the topics they discussed was evident.

"It ranges from eastern to western, the tones are all different-along with color usage. From what I've seen in the waiting room it's hard to find a common denominator." She ticked her fingers off as she listed the critiques only to pick at the last bits of polish that clung to her nails.

"Wood prints," Sasori explained. "Are the commonality. The advent of the printing press allowed for wider circulation of illustration and written word." for the imprint of images that would last through the ages. 'What is the point in even painting them if you're just going to strip them down?' not to mention the fact the flakes that were clinging to her skirt. 'messy.'

How he spoke on the subject-not in the perpetually unaffected manner she'd already categorized him under but almost at the verge of approaching zeal amused her. "Danse Macabre is a bit of an odd choice for your business don't you think?" her own accent was rather thick, she was better at reading and writing foreign languages than speaking them.

A notebook was flipped open over his knee, pen scratching across the surface. "What's more universal than death? It does not discriminate, It has no preference for one's status or state in life. " Their current subject was one that essentially epitomized his views on art. Eternity was a physical impossibility no matter how inhuman he felt or acted, Sasori could not shed what he was.

'But, some images, some concepts become so iconic they last through time immemorial.' he already had dark impulses and a rather unique skill set. it was an easy slip, turning murder into a higher form of art. 'Nothing quite grips the mind like death...'

"I would argue life is more universal," Sakura mused, frowning as she thought. "You can't die without living and you certainly couldn't philosophize about it. " Green eyes followed the movement of the pen, wondering what exactly he was writing about her. 'It's weird being written about like some sort of school project.'

"The three essentials; Life, Death and Time..." The Psychiatrist intoned definitively, deciding that it was time he took control of the conversation. "Any changes since we last met?"

A huff escaped Sakura as she crossed her arms. 'They_ are _ the three immutable forces that rule over existence, intricately tied and unable to be separated from the other, but really what a fatalist…' She wondered if Akasuna could sound any more like a funeral bell tolling and why his office was so ridiculously cold.

"No." It had only been a week since she last saw him, of course nothing would have changed. Stable sleep was as elusive as it had been before. Of course he asked if she had cut back on her caffeine intake-to which the answer was a succinct and resounding _ no _ .

A response that got her a rather snide look as if to say 'Well then you really have only yourself to blame for missing sleep.' She could almost hear him in her head. 'It's only our second meeting and he's already in my head.' that couldn't be good.

If Sakura didn't have coffee she would probably cease functioning. "Ah, but I am considering the advantages of taking up a hobby." that at least could be considered a consolation prize. "And also the connotations of the phrase "Sustainable expectations." she threw air quotes around that last bit for good measure.

It was too much to hope that he wouldn't ask her to elaborate on it, because he was looking up from his sporadic writing and she was left questioning how someone with such an apathetic expression could have such a piercing gaze. "What sort of hobby?" he would come back to the rest later.

'Well it would probably be less than ideal to say I'm taking more work home with me.' Sakura decided to stick as closely to the truth as she could, it made lying easier. "Reading. I used to read a lot but with everything going on I sort of stopped." she could remember with clarity the last book she'd read.

Sasori had gotten very good at spotting even the best of liars and he didn't consider Sakura to approach even mediocre in the department. "What did you last read?" he figured it would be some trashy novel.

"Dante's Inferno," an annotated copy because she wasn't Christian and as good as her english was certain things would be lost on her, especially all the name dropping. "I stopped at the Third Circle." that was when the first Shimenawa victim was found, she hadn't had it in her to continue at the time. Reading about souls being endlessly torn apart while they wallowed in mud had not helped in the sleep department.

"The third?" The punishment for the gluttonous, where Cerberus feasts in eternal rain." Sasori's eyebrows rose minutely. 'Well I suppose her taste isn't utterly irredeemable but she ought to complete what she started.'

"You should finish. A week should be enough, consider it homework to get you on track." He'd like to know what she thought about the eleventh canto, the one that concerned crimes against man, nature and art-or what the poet had termed art. 'Art can be Industry but industry is not always art.' [1]

It was a bit contrary to his own beliefs to put much stock in Dante's Inferno by the nature of who he was, irreligious and rather stepped in sin but the poet _ had _ crafted a lasting version of the afterlife with its nine circles. 'And there are parts of it that I find well written.' If Sasori had to put himself in a circle he'd be hard pressed. 'Somewhere between betrayal and murder.' he thought flippantly, having been both the betrayer and the betrayed.

'Well, now I have to finish reading it or get called on a lie.' Sakura sighed and nodded-finishing it within a week would at least be easy, speed reading was something she excelled at.

"Now what exactly, do sustainable expectations entail for you?"

Sakura outright laughed. "I have no clue." She had lots of expectations about her job, but none of them seemed particularly sustainable at the moment. 'Catch the bad guy before too many people die? Is that sustainable?' she turned the phrase over in her head a few more times.

"Still haven't caught your murderer?" It was all over the news that another body had been found-the public had a habit of becoming incensed at child deaths. Sasori was starting to think she was all false bravado when it came to seeing the pieces she needed to figure it out. 'Ah, I hit a sore spot.' Through her grimace He could see the miniscule chip in one of Sakura's laterals worn by time as she bristled in her seat.

"No, I haven't. Obviously. " It felt like he'd poured a ton of salt all over her. 'He could have at least brought it up with more tact.' The pieces were there but the _ why _ was still missing.

The pen Sasori was holding flitted between his fingers in a remarkably graceful way, like how some would flip a coin over their knuckles. "Given all that you know, why would_ you _take someone's hands?" he could think of quite a few reasons to do it.

There was a prolonged period of silence as she considered the question. "Well to start with;_ I wouldn't. _ " Sakura stressed the point, because there was no way she ever _ could _ . "I mean it could be any number of reasons why they're doing it. Serial Killers like to keep trophies, from body parts to clothing or photos. Which by the way is beyond _ stupid _ of them." Though to be honest she found wanton murder stupid to begin with.

Only idiots kept incriminating evidence-that was something he agreed with her on. 'Especially body parts. There is a distinct scent to decomposing human flesh.' Maybe that was only a psychosomatic perception but it never smelt quite the same as animal carcasses. 'And the things that some people get up to with them…' Society might have considered him sick but even Sasori had standards and ethics.

"In any case its entirely dependant on whether or not the crimes are religious. They certainly have religious undercurrents," But she wasn't entirely convinced they were the driving motivation. 'More like the after effects.' Sakura thought, tapping her fingers against the arm rest. "I mean they could be removing the hands to be preserved like they used to take body parts from martyrs."

Martyr relics were not simply a chiristian concept. They appeared in Buddhism, mostly in the form of ashes. 'And Buddhism and Shinto are not mutually exclusive.' There was quite a bit of overlap between the two. Most people on their continent practiced both in some measure.

"But you don't think that they are." If she did she wouldn't be using hypotheticals.

"No." She'd had multiple theories at the start, from some perverted creep to a religious zealot. "I also don't think that they are malicious in nature." Which was an odd thing to say about a child murderer, but it didn't matter what Sakura perceived the crimes as-but what the killer considered their actions to be. Kazuo's clean face and body in a pristine yukata, his kempt hair still neatly combed thanks to the mild weather were still present in her mind.

Sasori gestured at her to continue before she got too lost in her own thoughts, his wrist rolling with the movement.

"Right so the ropes...They aren't about keeping them from moving or binding their bodies in some power play. It's about protection, you tie them around sacred or pure places, they ward away evil. I couldn't tell with the first two bodies, they were too degraded...but if the most recent one is anything to go by they were well cared for before death. So if the killer were considering their bodies as temples, why remove the hands? It doesn't fit."

Removing the hands would be like desecrating a temple. 'Like ripping down Tori or removing Inari statues.' It was partly that discrepancy that kept hanging her up. There was something beyond ritual and bastardized Shinto beliefs.

Sakura's eyes caught a glare of light from hourglass, the dark red sand gone from the top. "Oh. Time's up." She wondered how long it had been run out.

His own eyes checked the wood and glass timekeeper for a moment. "So it is." Sasori was a bit surprised he hadn't noticed before, he hated extending appointments any longer than necessary. The only exception to the rule so far had been Deidara and that was because the fool constantly had to be talked off a proverbial ledge. 'It's fine if he wants to blow himself up but I would prefer not to be the doctor he is seeing when he pulls that stunt off.' It would bring too much scrutiny.

Normally the Doctor wouldn't care if one of his clients descended into their darker inclinations-he'd been known to encourage it for his own amusement, but Deidara's were wildly destructive and showy. 'It's one thing to subtly hint to a housewife that she ought to poison her husband, it's another to ignore the second coming of the Mad Bomber.'[2]

It was ironic that he found himself working to discourage Deidara's worst tendencies. 'One monster keeping another in check. How laughable.' If he believed that the universe was crafted by an intelligent designer he'd chalk it up to their twisted sense of humor. "Don't forget your reading, same time next week."

"Right, right..." She'd have to find time to review the file in her bag and finish reading the damn poem. 'Feels like college all over again.' Sakura wrenched the door open in her haste and almost screamed when she came face to face with what was beyond it.

"Maa, what's with that look? You look like you saw a ghost." Kakashi's hand was poised to knock on the door, slate grey eye looking down at her in-not-quite offense. The other eye was hidden beneath an eyepatch made sightless by some accident in the line of duty long before she met him.

"No it's something worse." Sakura shuddered. "What are you doing here? Better yet how did you even find this place?"

The rather tall man sighed and pointed at his masked face. "I know that I mostly sit in an office these days but I was a detective at one point." among other things. "And I also called Shizune." he wiggled the post-it note she'd left on his door on his index finger like a piece of bait. "I tried calling you first but your phone was off."

"Oh...Has something happened?" Sakura glanced behind her, realized that she was still standing in Sasori's office and began to edge herself and Kakashi out. 

"No, I just wanted to tell you I'm headed home but being the good neighbor I am I'll check on your cat for you-since you'd prefer to work late rather than go home and be a decent cat lady." Kakashi's eye crinkled cheerfully.

"I am not a cat lady. It's only _ one _ cat and I inherited her." Sakura scowled, feeling as though there was something more to his impromptu appearance.

"One now. Soon you'll be just like me, collecting animals." He teased pinching at her cheeks. "Maybe you'll pick up on reading Icha Icha too...we can have a book club."

"Not on your life!" Sakura slapped his hands away, cheeks turning pink. "I'm going!" She paused half way down the hall and turned back. "And thank you." Her pink hair fluttered behind her as she grumbled her way down the rest of the corridor about being treated like a kid.

Kakashi sighed, whatever mirth he'd exhibited whisked away as he turned to look through the still open door. "Sorry if I'm holding you up, but there is a _ bit _ more to my appearance than teasing Sakura."

There might have been a spark of interest in the Doctor's gaze as he motioned to a seat, leaning on the front of his desk casually.

"I'm fine with standing, thanks." Kakashi preferred to be on his feet in unknown territory, but he shuffled into the room, flipping open his book at he went. Some might call it a nervous tick but in actuality it was a measure of duplicity. People tended to be off their guard when facing a man reading porn right in front of their face. 'And I also happen to really like this book.' It had a perfect plot, it was X-rated and well written in his humble opinion.

"I guess I should start by saying I also respect Doctor-Patient confidentiality and that I have no intention of asking anything that would infringe on that. Unless of course there is anything concerning." Which he highly doubted considering Sakura had always been so well adjusted, even when her parents died. She'd mourned them and worked her way through the rest of her college courses. She'd never been the type to just fall apart.

'Except for maybe _ that _ incident when she was 12...and her developing workaholism.' and the fact that she was stubborn. 'So, so, _ sooo _ stubborn.' and often waffling between a well fed ego and crushing self-conscious thoughts. 'Still, one of the most stable people I know.' which _ might _have said something about the people Kakashi knew if he gave it much thought.

Sasori eyes skimmed the cover, expression unchanged. "Thus far? No." he was finding himself increasingly curious about where the conversation was going. 'It's not very often that the head agent of behavioral sciences waltzes into a killer's office to discuss the mental state of his protégé.' he was having more encounters with law enforcement than he had in a decade within the last two weeks. It might have been alarming if he weren't so sure they had nothing on him.

That was good news to Kakashi. "Shizune thinks that I'm being..._ precarious _ with her. I prefer to think I'm giving Sakura time and space to negotiate the job on her own terms." Maybe he did treat her like the kid who helped break his windows that summer all those years ago, but Kakashi did _ try _ to let her grow into her own despite the image that he projected. "But I do imagine you're finding her...difficult."

"Difficult? Do you mean the part where she avoids direct answers after prolonged periods of silence in which she crafts perfectly tailored responses?" It wasn't as if he could miss that affectation, half their time seemed to whittle away as she thought.

Kakashi gave a short laugh. "You know she probably doesn't even realize she's doing that? Awful habit, but yes that among other things."

"You don't seem like the type of person who would just drop by to have a friendly chat." Sasori was tired of waiting for the actual point of his visit.

"I'm not," Kakashi admitted, flipping a page at last. "I did my research on you when Shizune broached the subject; You're very talented-top of your classes. Med school at an early age, a surgeon by 20?" he whistled.

"Kaze was rather lax compared to Hi." He wasn't making light of his own achievements, but many of the things Sasori had gotten up to in his home country would not have been approved where he was now. 'Anywhere really.' he thought in addendum.

"And then 10 years later you left that behind to pursue the field of psychology. You've made quite a name for yourself in academic journals. Frankly you might be as brilliant as Sakura." Kakashi didn't consider his statements to be made out of favoritism.

Sasori had to reign in a chortle at the thought that they were anywhere close to one another in intellect. 'She might be smart, but there is no way she approaches me in that department.'

Kakashi didn't take offense to the quiet snort that escaped the other man. "How would you like to see her at work? I think it'll give you a bit more...perspective." he offered. "Shaking her up a bit might get you more authentic answers." well, maybe he was a _ little _offended on Sakura's behalf. ""To be clear what I'm offering you is a liaison position, comes with a restricted badge-it'll have to be renewed every few months. It would get you on and off crime scenes and the like so long as you're in the presence of a government agent."

In that moment Sasori wondered how anyone could possibly believe there was a god. 'This is like opening a hen house and letting a fox inside.' and poor Hatake didn't even know it.

Of course he wasn't going to say no, even if it meant he'd have a little less time for his usual pursuits. 'To be given a first hand look at the workings of those specifically trained to catch people like me? To refuse would be a mistake.' all it would do was give him an edge over them. "How can I refuse?" it took effort not to appear too sly as he looked Kakashi in the eye.

"Excellent, swing by monday and we'll take care of the credentials." They could have shook on it, but Kakashi made no move to put his book away and Sasori had no interest in offering his hand preemptively. Invisible battle lines had already been drawn.

Sasori would never realize it but moment he agreed to Kakashi's little venture may have been the moment that he sealed his fate, driven by hubris and self-surety that nothing could ever phase him.

* * *

Oh, Kakashi...no. You done goofed. You, Shizune and Sasori for that matter. Underestimating Sakura is the biggest mistake he'll make.

[1] Within Dante's Inferno, Dante seems to consider anything that men do, or make to earn a living to be "art" when in fact its industry. Art can become industry like if you make a painting and sell it for profit, but industry is not always art. A peasant plowing their field to earn bread is not "art" in Sasori's mind. (but then again he is a snob so…)

Dante was also specifically referencing money lenders as those who committed crimes against "art" because to him profits should be the fruit of one's OWN labor. Not them taking money from one person's work to turn it into more money. To him crimes against art were crimes against nature and that was like a crime against god himself, hence why they ranked lower in the pits of hell than say those guilty of greed. (The Lower you go the worse you are essentially. Betrayers being at the bottom.)

[2] The Mad Bomber, AKA George Metsekey was a real life person who terrorized NYC for 16 years in the 1940's. Out of the 33 bombs he planted 22 exploded, he killed 15 people. Deidara may or may not be aiming for something so illustrious.

That being said I do believe a large portion of the reason Deidara survived so long in canon was because Sasori was an oddly tempering force for him. One is concerned with destructive destruction and the other was about destructive creation. Ultimately though neither of them particularly value life, neither their own or any others-but they're still weird friends-not-friends. It's hard to explain crazy….

Sasori and Sakura are basically two big brains talking about big brain things but on opposite sides of the spectrum. Which is sort of how I see their dynamic in general. He is very concerned with death and this perverse concept of eternity while she is within the realm of preserving life and living in the present.

He's basically poison and she's an antidote, or if you want to you could conceptualize them as Yin/Yang. In every light there is a darkness and in every darkness there has to be a light, but when you put them together it becomes a whole. So while they are very different, they also have strange commonalities.

Sasori is a person who does not do well on his own, as exhibited in canon-and frankly I have a whole lot of Meta feels about what drove him to do and become what he did. I should probably write that for tumblr some time...

I actually intended for this chapter to be much longer. As in I was going to wrap Shimenawa up within it, but it proved to be way longer than I thought So it'll have to be one on its own. That said I do believe this was a pretty good place to end things for now. So far I have killed three kids and an untold number of people in the background. I'm beginning to feel like the real serial killer is me...

I feel like I should begin posting the art that Sakura keeps eyeballing in every chapter since its happened twice now.

Some of the youngest doctors in the real world are in their early twenties. Crazy, no?

Sasori and Sakura finally get to exist outside the confines of his office in the next chapter. Alright then, enough of my rambling….


	3. Take Heed That Thou Embrace Me

By Monday Sakura was already through to the eighth circle, a place for the fraudulent and malicious; a category that included seducers, panderers and flatterers. Apparently they were even worse than the glutinous and those who went against nature. Not that she was thinking anything of the Inferno while she had a decent rest for the first time in weeks.

She'd run the night before not in a dream but with her own feet, working her body to exhausting over rough terrain and woodland. Treadmills and paved surfaces could never compare to the toll it took on the body forcing it to adjust to every dip and rise with each foot fall.

So there she was, blissful and catching up on more hours than she could count when something wet and warm was dropped against the hollow of her throat. It took her longer than usual to rouse at the feeling.

And then _it twitched._

Sakura's eyes flew open, hand searching out the disturbance as Yurei purred by her ear, nose almost pressed to the side of her temple. A fresh mouse was what she'd been given, still warm and in its last throes. "Yurei!" She squealed, shuddering at the feel of it. It was hard to stay mad when she saw the clock. She was at least an hour late for feeding time not to mention work. 'Still, ew.'

Left to procure her own breakfast, Yurei apparently felt magnanimous enough to bring something back. "Thanks." Sakura deeply regretted installing a cat door. The feline mewled, head butting against her scalp in a way that almost soothed the disgusting wakeup call away.  
Yurei was just doing what came naturally to her and cats were nature's prolific little killers. 'Right up there with people and dolphins.' Sometimes she wondered if intelligence correlated with violence.

Resigned to the fact that there was no way she was making it to work at her usual time even if she rushed, Sakura wrapped the mouse in a tissue and left it to be dealt with after she was finished with the rest of the morning's tasks. The unfortunate rodent ended up being dropped in the outside trash bin on her way out the door, far from Yurei's sight.

'Well, I don't want to hurt her feelings.' Even if she didn't appreciate the gifts and what they insinuated. 'Look feeble human since you are incapable of feeding me and therefore yourself, I, the mighty Yurei have pulled through for both of us.' In Sakura's head the cat sounded every bit as haughty as she thought Dr. Akasuna was.

An hour behind schedule Sakura finally strode through the halls of her division, mouth full of Onigiri. The umeboshi filling salty and faintly sweet on her tongue.'Besides the dead mouse and being late, it's not that bad of a day.' there was also a child murderer on the loose but the weather wasn't bad and she was feeling less...strained than usual thanks to the extra sleep.

That _was _what she was thinking until she caught sight of red hair-a shade she'd come to associate with one person.

Sakura choked on the rice and struggled to clear her throat, bracing herself against the doors like they were her last line of defense. "What the fuck?" Sakura muttered. He was supposed to be relegated to her Friday's and nothing more. Yet there he was milling about her work space, sitting in her seat. Her eyes narrowed. 'Wait a second, is he touching stuff?' she did a double take. He was. 'No. Nope. Unacceptable!' It was bad enough when Kakashi did it.

_Agent_ Haruno took a cleansing breath, forced the very best _everything-is-totally-fine _smile she could across her face-which probably wasn't all that good to begin with as she strode across the floor.

"You're late." He looked annoyed, as if he had a right to her time.

The smile didn't quite fall, it simply shifted to show a little too much tooth to be friendly. "Oh?" She yanked the file he'd been perusing away. "I hadn't noticed." A quick look at her desk told her all she needed to know, Sakura could see the beige surface for the first time in-well probably since it became _her _desk. She bit back a hiss. "You shouldn't have."

"I had nothing better to do while I waited," Sasori said it like he'd done her a favor. "And the mess was atrocious." He wasn't sure how she managed to find anything in it and after about 15 minutes of looking he couldn't stand the sight anymore.

'It is perfectly normal to imagine maiming someone with a folder, right?' Sakura tried to access the damage done to her workspace but she caught a glimpse of Kakashi through the glass pane of his office window waving at her. A muscle near her eye twitched. "Thanks," Almost spitefully she mussed one of the _apparently_ alphabetically organized piles. "Why are you here exactly?"

Probably to pour more salt all over her failings.

There was something unmistakably smug in his sienna eyes, the way they at her peered beneath dark lashes and hooded lids. Not for the first time she bemoaned how unfair it was for him to look like he did. A blush threatened to spread across her cheeks. ' I like handsome men and there is nothing wrong with that.' Looking was fine, anything else would be a problem. 'And so what if he's good looking anyways?' he rubbed her the wrong way and sometimes it felt like he did it on purpose.

"I do believe that's what Hatake is trying to tell you, Brat." Sasori sighed at the mess she'd slid across the desk. It hadn't taken him long to arrange but it was still vexing.

It had to be on purpose. "B-brat?!" Oh the things she could do with a folder...well there weren't actually that many but she would find a way, Sakura could be inventive if she had to. "You-" Kakashi's door rattled open and whatever expletive that she had intended to spit out halted. It was beginning to feel like she'd stepped into some sort of trap the moment she came into work.

"Sakura, you're late." Not that he had much room to talk. Kakashi had abandoned subtly trying to get her attention and was already guiding her into his office. Feeling as though he had averted an impending blood bath he wondered if he'd made the right decision after all. "Before you go apocalyptic allow me to explain." He began, shutting his office door.

Sakura glared through the window and through the blinds. "Uhuh." She was too busy watching Sasori move things around again. 'Damn it!'

'Like a bandaid.' Kakashi cleared his throat and made sure the desk was between the two of them. "Now don't get angry but he'll be with you for a bit. At least a few months while he has the spare time and his credentials last."

"What for? What did he say to you?!" There was no way she was abnormal enough-or even at all to warrant being shadowed by a shrink. 'I am _mostly_ normal.' Sakura decided. 'Anyone who says they are totally normal probably isn't at all.'

Kakashi slunk further behind his desk. "This is not about _you_ needing anything. It's more about proving a point in a constructive manner." he wasn't necessarily a proud man when it came to himself but he hated to see someone else's hard work underestimated. 'Those with natural talent will always fail when it comes to hard work.' it was a lesson everyone should experience, just to keep them humble.

"This does not feel _constructive_," Sakura grumbled, focusing her glare on him when she caught sight of _that_ book in his hands. "It feels like punishment."

"Look underneath the underneath." The one eyed man supplied unhelpfully. "The morgue called a while ago,you should head down with your tag-a-long."

Sensing that she wasn't going to get far arguing against the current set up Sakura chewed her bottom lip in agitation. "Right." the click of her short heels seemed to echo in her ears as she made her way back to her desk. "You can either ride with me or find your own way to the morgue." she seemed pleased at the thought.

"I'll ride with you." Sasori would have preferred to drive himself but the separation might defeat the purpose of his new diversion. Just the thought of her being perceived as on his level had him oddly fixed in between amusement and disdain. Admittedly he had a sense of deserved arrogance. He just hoped she didn't drive like she kept her desk; chaotic.

Following her lead to a mud splattered SUV, he couldn't hold back the sigh. Sasori was starting to lose hope when it came to the expectation of an orderly drive. Sakura unlocked the doors and hefted herself into the driver's seat with grace that came with practice.

"Does the government pay for the gas that goes in this beast?" It wasn't exactly what Sasori would call efficient.

"No, the taxpayers do." Sakura corrected cheekily, wrist turning the ignition. "One of the job perks." She didn't bother using the mirrors to back out of the space, instead craning her neck in uncomfortable ways to see what she needed to. Other than that it turned out she was proficient, abided all the laws, and didn't push the speed limit like a good citizen.

"Did you happen to look at the case file for Shimenawa while you were messing about my desk?" She wanted to make sure Sasori knew what he was getting himself into.

It was a mess way before he touched it. "Of course." And the board across from her desk too. The radio was low but he could hear the chattering of some news station. "Have you been doing _your_ reading?"

"There with his tokens and with ornate words did he deceive Hypsipyle, the maiden  
Who first, herself, had all the rest deceived." Sakura quoted, she remembered that bit particularly well since it spoke of Jason the Argonaut, husband of Medea. 'He had a real habit of screwing women over...although murdering both your kids to get back at a man is worse than him abandoning you.' Medea had taken things to the extreme. [1]

Sasori made a noise of recognition. "And the verse preceding that one?"

"He seemed to have an intense dislike for money lenders and a rather loose definition of what constituted art." Sakura stated dryly, she wasn't exactly sure anything and everything people did fell under the term. "Actually, it seems that all his enemies in life ended up in Hell. A bit like a revenge poem."

"Torment is generally what one wishes for their enemies." Although he had always preferred a more...proactive way in dealing with them then writing them into poetry.

"I don't have any. Not like that at least."

"You don't hate Shimenawa? Or the parents? Aren't they your enemies?" Sasori wondered.

"Yes and no. What I feel about them isn't personal...it's not an intimate sort of hatred. Its...abstract." She hates what they do and how they are,despises that they ruined lives without thinking twice but in its own way it is a distant loathing. If she had to think of the person _she_ hated most there was really only one face that came to mind, but what she felt for him wasn't just hate. Pity and dismay had their roles to play too.

Honestly as a whole she just preferred not to think about Uchiha Itachi. She'd put that behind her. 'Well, I had.' The case had been dredging up nightmares and incessantly reminding Sakura of a past better left forgotten.

"Give it time." Sasori laughed lowly. "The only people who don't have someone to hate are the young or the stupid."

A shiver worked its way down her spine at the sound, wondering if he counted her as young or stupid. "How many enemies do you have and what sort of hate do they inspire?" she could just picture him holding a grudge over someone messing up his name. Something about Sasori screamed that he was all about petty vengeances, maybe it was the way he seemed to hoard time.

"Very few and the intense sort." One might assume that he hated people as a rule but in truth he looked at the masses with utter apathy. There weren't many who had gotten underneath his skin enough to elicit a reaction as strong as hate. Sasori felt dislike and annoyance easily but hatred, as Sakura had said was _personal_.

As a rule, it was very hard to make things personal with him. If someone did manage to strike hate, it wouldn't matter how many years passed or the scheming it required sooner or later they would be dead. 'And I can be very inventive when it comes to staging a demise.' The last time things had been personal he'd killed a high ranking politician a country away.

She looked from the road briefly to catch of glimpse of his face in was not the blankness that she saw frequently lurking on his face but something more focused, cold even. 'I wonder what a person has to do to warrant that look…' Sakura would certainly prefer to never be the target of it.

No words were spoken about him commandeering the radio, she didn't complain when he turned it up and the sound of frantic piano notes filtered into the small space.

One of the things he discovers about Sakura is that when it came to work she moved nothing like she drove. Her pace was quick when she walked, faster than most as the sound of her steps echoed over concrete and tile. He doesn't push himself to keep up, content to remain in the background and watch.

The morgue that was housing Minami Kazuo's body was attached to some small hospital. There was a mother and her young son passing by, holding hands that Sakura's eyes gravitated to even as they moved towards the elevator, the morgue was all the way down.

"Don't let go, okay?" The older woman teased, their locked hands swinging back and forth.

"Uhuh! I was good today, so can we get Ice cream?" The boy begged.

The elevator doors shut and Sakura didn't hear the rest of the conversation but she was reminded of her own mother, the way her hand had once engulfed her own. Of how desperate it felt at times.

"Haruno." Sasori was glancing at her from outside the open elevator doors, holding them open as he waited and looked at her with his critical eyes. "Are you going to insist on keeping me waiting all the time?" he had half a mind to just let the doors shut while she daydreamed.

She quickly stepped beneath his arm uttering an apology as she brushed against his torso, it was a brief graze of her arm to his side. Close enough to smell his cologne or whatever gave of the faint scent of cedar and something she didn't recognize right away.'of course he has to look good and smell nice.' Next thing she knew he'd be good at cooking too.

There was no need for Sakura to view the body of Kazuo a second time, but through the large glass pane separating what doubled as a viewing room and an office space she could still make out the small sheet covered body laying on the metal slab. The medical examiner whose name escaped her was an older woman, well used to her job and almost unbothered as she recited her findings.

A sheaf of papers documenting it all was also offered and Sakura was thankful for something else to focus her eyes on.

"Hands, like the others were removed after death by exsanguination-from the cut throats obviously all the other cuts and bruises were healing pretty well. Good news is that this time we were able to get a look at the stomach contents and all the others were pretty degraded."

Keiko-as Sakura recalled her name to be rattled on. "In the week before he died he was pretty well fed, last meal was omelette rice with ketchup and a good portion of Ice-cream laced with opiates."

Sasori watched as Sakura's eyes went wide under the fluorescent lights, made bright by more than just the harsh lighting-her bearing shifted as she seemed to stand straighter. "Oh." She said almost breathlessly. He's seen people come to sudden conclusions before, usually in horror that they were going to die. What he sees in her expression is different, almost enthralling in its intensity.

It took him back to their first meeting, when she had declared with such certainty that there would be some sudden piece that made everything clear.

"Shimenawa is a woman!" Sakura cried at last, ignoring the way the coroner jumped at the sudden exclamation in the once quiet room.

"They make up less than 15% of Serial Killers." Sasori murmured, not disputing her claim. Given what he knew from reading through the reports and what he's heard thus far it wasn't unlikely to be the case. What unsettled him is that he had not come to the conclusion before her. He'd assumed they were mercy killings but not the gender of the perpetrator.

"Yes and they usually kill for gain-for money or for revenge, or out of comfort." Women could be ruthless in their own ways, with men it was usually for pleasure, power. Sakura's thoughts sped as she spoke, wishing that she had more coffee. "Women are typically more lowkey in murders than men, less violent. They prefer poison to making a mess and their victims generally aren't strangers."

Sasori nodded, despite the fact that she was mostly talking to herself at this point. "There are always outliers." Poison for instance, was not solely the dominion of women.

The neat hair, the tidy clothes, the meal catered to a child's taste-She thinks of the mother holding her son's hand and knows at once what is going on. "She thinks she's saving them," Sakura laughed, the sound short and bitter even to her own ears. "Keeping the hands because she can't bear to let go, trying to ward off evil in death like it couldn't be in life." it's so awfully twisted, the image that she is seeing at last.

"If you know why, do you know how she's finding them?" He watched as she began pacing. 'It's probably just a coincidence that she's come to a conclusion so quickly.' The medical examiner had disappeared, either to finish other work or to provide them privacy, the window to the autopsy room had gone dark.

"It has to be someone who knows their history, someone they would trust because for kids like them that doesn't come easily. It can't." Sakura desperately wished for caffeine in that moment. "And of course they would trust a woman more easily than a man." it was almost ingrained into society that strange men were dangerous but strange women were somehow less so. "It's not the social workers, they've already been looked at."

Sakura was already bustling her way out the door, leaving him in her wake. "Ah but...We didn't look at the call center!"

Sasori might have been bothered having to follow her around if he hadn't steeled himself for the inevitability the days ago. He is used to being in charge, making his own hours and dictating how things were to be. With her he is the interloper and follows accordingly.

The day was stretching on and she was relentless, pushing on past the lunch hour. It was fine by him, he didn't look forward to choking down greasy fast food like they were in some buddy-cop movie.

They'd gone from the morgue to the closest, cramped and outdated child welfare center. Fire country might have been one of the more advanced on the continent, but it was severely lacking in the welfare department-both in structure and manpower. A burgeoning public scandal given the recent events. Which was why the very reticent Head Director had to be all but threatened by a snappy Sakura.

"There are already three dead children and if during the time it takes me to get a court order another one dies, I won't be the one getting dragged through the mud. It'll be you. So, just give me the records of the calls regarding these cases, or the tabloids might find themselves a new anonymous source." She glared over the counter viciously, foot tapping an agitated rhythm against the ground.

"It's not really anonymous if you tell someone you're going to do it." Sasori snorted from behind her, only to be shushed-Another thing he wasn't used to.

The subtle threat got the man moving but given the outdated facilities it took time to spit out the information, not to mention he moved spitefully slow fulfilling the request.

Sakura's eyes caught sight of a clock and her foot stalled. It was well past the lunch hour. "I suppose we should call it a day after this, I've been running you around pretty hard and I've got to look over this stuff." The papers came bit by bit, until in the end she was left with a rather tall stack, a testament to just how many calls had been made.

Sasori nodded, watching as the work grew by the minute, thankful it was her problem and not his. "Agreed."

The first order of business was finding which coorosponder took calls regarding all three victims and then Sakura would poke around at their background, see if they fit the timeline of the murders. In the meantime, she hoped they wouldn't escalate and that she still had time before a fourth person was on the line. When the walls began closing in, murderers had a tendency to become considerably more erratic.

It took two days to whittle down the suspects.

"I cannot believe how many of these there were." Sakura dropped her empty coffee cup into the trash bin. She'd come to the last of the logs and found only two correspondents who had taken calls from all three victims. 'It only took two days.' She thought in annoyance, rolling her shoulders to work out the kinks.

"The incompetence of bureaucracy." Sasori wasn't being particularly helpful sitting across from her in the space where Yamato usually was, eyeing the immaculate little tree with tepid interest. The other man was apparently half the country away chasing his own quarry.

Sakura looked at the two names she had circled and sighed wondering which to start with first. "Watanabe Botan or Fujiwara Sakae." looking at public records could only tell her so much about a person, to really know anything she had to meet them. 'On the one hand its good they aren't social media addicts, on the other it makes my job so much harder." She knew where they lived and worked but not much else.

In the end she decided to choose by game of chance, uttering the childhood nursery rhyme under her breath.

"And you get offended by being called Little Girl." Sasori scoffed, watching as her finger wavered between the two.

"Has anyone ever told you, you're kind of a dick?" Sakura asked, her smile would have been pleasant if it weren't for the tick forming below her eye.

"In those exact words? No." At least not to his face. Deidara might have come close to it once but for the most part the sociopath was oddly respectful given their opposing views. A part of him appreciated her frank honesty.

"Shocking." Sakura mumbled, the game having ended in favor of Watanabe Botan.

Sasori was already standing, waiting for her to dart off as she was prone to do. "I suppose we're going back to that abysmal place?" The plastic chairs and moldering ceiling tiles disgusted him.

"Yes." She really did not want to deal with the Director again. 'I can't even remember their name.' But off she went, Sasori behind like a second shadow, the burgundy color of his suit so dark it seemed black in low lighting.

The Director the the facility-Toshiro, as it turned out to be had not grown any fonder in their absence. "You again?"

"Yea," Sakura sneered back. "Us."

Sasori caught on to the word choice, turning it over in his head wondering when they had become a plural rather than a singular to her. Even if he was only following along, waiting and watching to see if she would succeed or fail she somehow considered him a part of it. "Hah." he wasn't exactly sure how that made him feel. It wasn't unpleasant but…'I shouldn't feel anything about it.' he decided.

"I'm not here to talk to you, I'm here to talk to Watanabe Botan."

"Well that'll be a problem because she's not here. Hasn't been for the last two days. She has chronic back problems and gets to do her work from home a lot."

Sakura's face turned pale. "I don't suppose she uses prescription pain pills?"

Toshiro shrugged. "I don't know, would you like me to call and ask?"

"No! Find me the last few complaints she logged." Sakura demanded, hoping it was nothing. It felt like it took forever but there weren't many names on the list, a few of them repeated. She snatched Sasori by the sleeve of his blazer and was pulling him out the door-forcing him to move quicker than he normally would on his own.

If he was annoyed he didn't show it. Even if he doesn't feel it himself Sasori knows the situation would be viewed as urgent by most.

Sakura hardly had time to pay attention to him, phone cradled between her ear and shoulder. She already had Watanabe's address but she called the local law enforcement on the way to check the names on the list, hoping that everyone was accounted for. If someone was missing they were to call her back.

Her driving was more erratic now, she pushed the speed limit and Sasori found himself tempted to use the handrail above his head. "You won't be much use if your brain spills out all over the pavement." He spat, preferring that his own death be something a little less inglorious.

The death grip Sakura held the steering wheel with barely loosened. "I don't think I should have to tell you how serious this is."

"I'm well aware." He knew she took the situation like her own life was on the line rather than some strangers. "But you'll want to be at your best for whatever comes and you at your _best _isn't going to come through panic."

"I am not panicking." Her grip loosened, hating that he held that perception. The noise he made didn't convince her that he believed her words. "Nervous," Sakura insisted. "Is not the same as panicking." The vehicle fell into silence.

It felt so much longer than 30 minutes, but when she hit the address the feeling that had been pressing down on her wasn't assuaged, It just grew. A long line of steps slightly overgrown with grass led up a steep hill, arched with old unmaintained torii-even the red paint had been worn away from them. "Fuck." The certainty of what she was looking at washed over her.

Sakura was out of the car and halfway up the steps when her phone rang.

'Her little game of chance this morning paid dividends.' Sasori thought, pace languid as he ascended the steps behind her. He knew himself enough to note that he's feeling almost-impressed. He stopped a step away watching as her breath hitched at the voice speaking through the cell. He could hear a name being mentioned.

As it turned out one of the children on the list was missing. 'Ikeda Nao.' Sakura took a breath. "Take this." she passed the phone to Sasori after the call ended and continued up the steps. She didn't sprint, not knowing what would meet her when she got to the top. 'Don't strain yourself just yet.' Sakura thought, the weight of the gun against her side suddenly prevalent.

The remnants of the temple looked like they had been burned some time ago, but there was a house beyond it built in a more modern style. She waited for Sasori at the top of the steps. "Call emergency services, give them the address and stay on the line with them until they arrive." Sakura popped the clasp holding her holster closed.

Playing the part of a decent human being Sasori went through the motions of doing as he was asked, though he followed her closer to the house intent on watching how things played out.

The law said that she had to announce herself as an officer of the law before entering or attempting to enter the premesis, even though she found it phenominally stupid in her current situation. Sakura found herself doing it anyways, knocking on the door and stating her purpose as Agent Haruno. There was no answer and the door was clearly locked..

Locked and sturdy Sakura found as she experimentally pressed her hands against it, testing the strength.

"I highly doubt you'll be breaking through it." Sasori warned knowing oak when he saw it and from the sound the door made when she knocked he knew it was solid.

Sakura glanced at him from over her shoulder, eyebrows slanted over defiant green eyes. She took a few steps away from the door, back turned to until she whirled leg hitched high, skirt tugged higher up her thigh with the movement.

The motion drew his eyes, he took in the sight of her slim ankle, the thin buckle that kept the heel from slipping off and almost scoffed. 'She'll end up with a broken foot.' The ball of it struck first, the wood around the door latch cracked and splintered beneath it and the door swung open forcefully, rebounding into the wall behind it.

It was slow in his mind, but in truth it happened in the span of seconds. One moment the door was shut and the next it was blown open with the cry of "Shannaro!"

Sasori's breath caught, eyes wide in a way that was imperceptible to most but to him it felt like he was standing around slack jawed. "You call yourself a woman with that strength?" it shouldn't have even been possible for someone of her size and build.

She didn't stick around to quibble with him, pink hair swallowed by the darkened halls she traversed through. The operator on the phone chattered on to his uncaring ears. 'As if I'll stay behind when the end to this show is nigh.' Sasori thought and prowled after her still trying to decipher where the strength laid. She didn't even limp after the show of force. 'And in heels.' apparently she hadn't been kidding about it.

The gun was fully out of its cradle held with both hands in the proper form, finger not quite on the trigger as she peered around corners and opened doors as quietly as she could. There was an art to shooting and she knew it well. 'Its a lot harder to be accurate with one hand then it is with two.' and only the careless put their finger on the trigger before they intended pull it.

A quiet scuffle and a whimper caught her ear from behind a door and she opened it slowly.

Watanabe's lilac eyes met hers, knife pressed to the throat of the boy cradled against her chest. "You can't take him, I'm saving him." she insisted, hunkered in a bathtub. A thin line of red began to flow down Nao's neck his dark eyes looking into the distance, drugged. He didn't even struggle under the pressure of the knife.

"Put the knife down." Sakura's finger slid over the trigger, shot lining up with the woman's head. 'I don't want to but I will' she thought, feeling a cold sweat began to break out. So what if she had trained to take a life when the situation arose, it wasn't supposed to be easy.

"N-no. I just want to keep them safe." The woman that the world had come to call Shimenawa insisted, wrist tensing. "This is the only way."

"You're not saving anyone." There were no words that could stop what had already begun and just as the knife cut deeper a shot rang out, the sound making Sakura's ears ache.

Watanabe's head jerked back, brains blown through behind her and across the wall. Her last move spent cutting a deep line across Nao's throat. Sakura fumbled with putting the gun away, wrenching the boy's jerking body out of the tub and across her lap, heedless of the spurting blood.

Sakura's shaking hands cupped over his throat, trying to stem the flow. Distantly she recognized the sound of her own voice and wondered if her poor hearing was due to the gunshot or something else. "You'll be okay." her eyes felt wet, but so did her shirt and her hands, even her legs weren't spared. There was so much red everywhere.

Nao's dark eyes stared up at her face, eyes fluttering as his skin turned grey and for a moment all Sakura could see was that boy from her past, blood on his face in the dark of the night. 'Sasuke-kun…'

Emergency Services were still moments away and it would be odd if he, a former practicing surgeon did nothing. Sakura's grip was too loose and the position of her thumb was off just a touch to be effective-a better effort than most would manage but not good enough.

Resigned to the fact that his clothes were going to be ruined Sasori knelt across from her, hand sliding over her already soaked one pressing it tighter. His fingers nudged along hers, guiding them to proper placement. The blood flowed less, but the white shirt she'd been wearing stuck to her skin, dyed crimson. 'Red is not a bad color on her.' he thought, having always been partial to the color. He found it pleasing to the eye.

Sakura's gaze rose to meet his own, lips trembling just slightly. Her eyes looked glossy with what were probably tears. He isn't unused to people crying but he hasn't seen this look on her face before. It occurred to him then that Watanabe was probably the first person she'd ever killed.

Her reaction to it is different than his own. Sasori's memory is long and bordering on eidetic even if the scientific community debated its existence. What he remembers of the first death he dealt was adrenaline and vindication, there were no tears or questions about the mortality of it.

Sakura breathed deeply, feeling Nao's sluggish pulse beneath her fingers. The blood was slower. If she wanted to cry there would be time later, only she wasn't sure if the tears that came would be shed in relief or something else. She didn't look at Watanabe's slumped body more than thankful for the grounding that came with the touch of Sasori's hand and how steady he was. It made her feel like she wasn't alone.

If he had to put a name to what he felt in that moment it would be admiration. It wasn't quite the same as how he viewed Listz or Monzaemon's work, although he does find something oddly...artful about the way that she works, making her connects and piecing things together with alarming clarity. Sakura had a quick, tenacious mind and strength that clearly belied her looks.

She was, admittedly _impressive_. Not within his league but she was nothing to scoff about. 'Is it in spite of her emotions? Or because of them…' It seemed, in retrospect that Kakashi had planned for this to be the end result-and as much as Sasori hated to be played with he could admit defeat when the loss was fair.

The paramedics and the local authorities began to file in, turning the already small bathroom into something unbearably cramped. "He's not looking good." One of them mumbled, after Sakura's hand had been moved for a more effective bandaging. "He needs blood, as fast as possible..."

"I'm O+. He can have mine, whatever will hold him over until he gets to the hospital." Sakura insisted. Unbanked direct transfusions were saved for grievous cases and Nao's warranted it. Kakashi would have to find her at the hospital to get a debriefing.

Sasori ended up riding along in the ambulance-watching Sakura's blood pass through the I.V into Nao. 'The last new days have certainly been eventful.'

"Doctor Akasuna," Sakura's eyes were already slightly woozy, ten minutes into the blood letting.

'Poor eating habits and lack of sleep will do that.' Sasori thought, waiting for her to finish.

"Ah, thank you-I mean I was, well...you know-." She rambled, waving her free arm. "If it weren't for you Nao probably would have bled out. I was sort of a mess." It was hard admitting it to herself.

"Sasori," He corrected, feeling rather generous. Following her around her around had not been a waste of time, he would go as far to admit that her company was tolerable-a category that not many people fell into. "After all, what are titles with blood between us?" The blood beneath his nails was the same under her own.

It felt like high praise from him, a faint heat washed over her face despite the fluid she was missing. "Does that mean you'll stop calling me girl?" A crooked thing, not quite a smirk or a smile crossed his face-it made him seem softer in her eyes.

"No." 

* * *

[1] So within Inferno, Jason of the Argonauts shows up as a seducer being tormented in hell...because he had a habit of seducing, using women and then abandoning them. Hypsipyle was one of those women, she lived on an island where all the women decided to murder the men but she helped her father get away-hence she was technically a "deceiver". Pregnant, she was abandoned by Jason-who later hooks up with Medea and tries to ditch her too.

It ends badly for him that time..and everyone else.

6k lmao.

Sakura is just really attractive to murderers, ya know? Her cat, Sasori...

Shimenawa is over with more or less, the only thing that remains is the fall out. Which means it's off to other things, like Snakes and weird corpse art and slowly falling in love.

Me tallying up how many times Sasori and Sakura have met: 5 times, 2 sessions and 3 really long work days.


	4. Be Careful Where You Look

No matter how justified it might have been to kill Watanabe the event garnered Sakura a week off work-or at least however long it took for her to finish a mandatory evaluation by Sasori. 'Because apparently after shooting someone I'm suddenly in danger of snapping and shooting more people.' she really would have preferred not to have done it to begin with.

Three days later and she still tried very hard not to think about the event, knowing that doing so would mean facing her conflicting feelings on the subject. 'Ah-ah, you're already headed down that rabbit hole.' Sakura shook her head, listening to the steady beeping of the EKG machine. 'Just focus on this damn file.' trying to fill the time until Nao woke up had led her to perusing the potential case she'd packed away some time ago.

Losing herself in the slow process of methodically charting where's, when's and how's while looking for exactly who had submitted the file had proven a pretty good time killer.

'Unfortunately the damn thing is such a mess after years of floating from desk to desk, it's all jumbled up and nothing seems to be in order.' Still, she had found a number not that she expected the person to be an active officer anymore considering the time gap but she'd called anyways to see if they could be reached through more personal channels. ' Except that they are _worse_ than retired, they're dead.' and they had been for sometime.

Of course Mikage Hinoto hadn't died of natural causes, she'd died in a car accident about a week after she'd submitted the file she had compiled to head division more than a decade ago. 'That's not coincidental at_all_.' Sakura huffed and sipped her coffee, savoring the peppermint flavor. The whole thing stunk and she had half a mind to take a train down to Miyagi prefecture to ask her off the book questions in person and she would have it she weren't waiting for Nao to wake up.

Nao who didn't have anyone decent waiting for him when he woke up, whose fate was uncertain at best as he lay slumbering in his hospital bed. All Sakura could do was hope the state did its job properly this time and put him somewhere he would be safe permanently. In three days she'd had the luck of not running into them and she was beginning to worry it would run out and she'd find herself in the rather uncomfortable position of having to play nice.

It wasn't lost on her that she might have been a little too attached than what was considered professional but she wasn't sure she cared either. 'If I'm not here, who will be?' Him having to wake up alone and confused after everything that happened seemed doubly cruel. Her fingers flipped through pages with photos clipped to them. Before, in the office she'd only really looked superficially and she was noticing things she hadn't before.

Like an alarming number of family annihilations. 'Generally speaking It's usually the father who murders his wife and kids and then himself...but these aren't so straight cut.' Sakura's brow wrinkled, reading over the reports. Sometimes it was the mother and odder still one of the children but there were times where not all of the bodies were accounted for. 'And there is always a snake somewhere…'

"Knock-knock Forehead." A familiar voice called from behind her, slim fingers tangling in her hair.

"Ino-pig," The tension fled from her shoulders and she leaned into the hand. "It's been a while." She didn't bother asking how the blonde had found her because more than likely she'd pestered the information out of Kakashi. 'I guess that's the price of being best friends with a journalist.'

"So nice to see you remembered me!" She hadn't heard from Sakura in a week-an abnormal event in the 21 years they'd known one another. They'd been best friends since they were five and no amount of time had changed that and probably never would. "I was getting worried you forgot all about me." Ino pouted, circling the chair to drop into the empty one across the bed.

"I even brought you lunch and coffee, although I see you have the second one more than covered." Her blue eyes looked between the waste bin and the drink in Sakura's hand knowingly as she set the cup carrier and takeaway she brought on the small table off to the side. "Congratulations, you caught the killer, saved the kid. Seems to me you could stand to look a little happier." she teased.

"Technically I didn't catch her...but that's neither here nor there. It's just hard to be happy when his future is still up in the air." The doctor's said Nao was mostly alright, out of the grasp of death and most of what kept him asleep was likely mental in nature. 'which is understandable.' He had probably felt safe with Watanabe Botan for the first time in who knew when and then she drugged and turned a knife on him.

A part of her hoped he didn't remember that...but the scar on his neck would be all he needed to know it.

Sakura shut the folder and dropped it back into her bag. "With everything he's been through before and now this…" children were generally more elastic than adults when it came to coping but Nao was sure to have difficulties.

"None of that is your fault." Ino huffed, flicking her long platinum hair out of her face. "I know what..._who_ you're seeing when you look at him but you aren't responsible for what happened to Sasuke or his family either. We were all just kids. No one could see what was going on."

Flopping her hands into the sleeves of her oversized sweater, Sakura nodded-of course she _knew_ it to be the case, she just had trouble _feeling _that way. She'd been so close to the incoming carnage all those years ago yet so blind.

To the whole world the Uchiha had seemed like an utterly perfect family, a father who had been the chief of Konoha's metropolitan police department, a doting housewife who'd once been a lawyer, a genius of an eldest son and a younger one who was sure to follow in his brother's footsteps. Only no one could see the rot beneath, no one could see Itachi coming apart at the seams.

Not her, not Naruto and they were at the Uchiha residence every other day. 'But what can a 10 year old really know in the end?" She only saw what she wanted to see. Whatever drove itachi to murder his family that night could only be hypothesized, when the police had come he'd surrendered peaceably, admitted his guilt, was pronounced insane and remanded to a maximum security psychiatric facility on the outskirts of the city.

'And I wrote letters to him for three years just looking for an answer.' Those three years had been bleak, she-looking back on it had been obsessed. it was for the best that he never replied to a single one. Naruto had fared better, he'd actually gotten in to see Itachi after he had turned 18. 'But he said Itachi never told him anything of substance.' They'd talked about the weather, Naruto's future career and that was the end of that.

Sakura would have put it behind her a lot easier if it weren't for the fact that she swore she saw Sasuke that night, after everyone else was supposed to be dead. 'But blood doesn't lie and the forensics said that Sasuke died there,even if they never found a body.' but that hadn't stopped her from insisting she'd seen him in the woods covered in blood. 'And this is exactly why I spent a good portion of my adolescence as the crazy girl who saw a ghost.` the dark hole she'd been sidestepping was growing wider.

"Sakura…" Ino sighed seeing the far off look in her green eyes. "I shouldn't have brought it up. It's just that you have a habit of taking on more than you should." In her opinion being driven was all well and good so long as Sakura wasn't driving herself to destruction.

"And don't get me wrong I love that you're sitting by this kids beside just so that he doesn't wake up alone...but don't neglect yourself." Ino wouldn't ask outright about the shooting not after pressing on one sore spot already. 'She'll tell me when she's ready." She was a very good reporter and an even better friend, knowing when to be nosey and when to leave things alone.

Passing one of the bento's she brought over Ino turned the conversation to something lighter. "So...has that cute doctor been in here yet?"

The box happened to be filled with chestnut rice, grilled marinated beef and a good portion of tempura fried vegetables. "You are the best." Sakura sighed happily, breaking her chopsticks in two. "Cute doctor?" Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall what handsome doctor Ino would be referring to. 'Well there is Sasori but she has no way of knowing about him.' Funny how he'd been her first thought.

"Brown hair, blue eyes…" Ino grinned, picking at a chestnut. "Could be the future Haruno-san."

"Oh no, don't try setting me up again." Sakura whined, slouching in her chair. "The last time went awfully."

"That was five years ago! We were only 20, I definitely deserve another chance." Ino huffed. "I mean how was I supposed to know he was going to pass out drunk on y-" a pen hit her in the chest. "Rude."

"We have a blood oath to absolutely never talk about that again." Sakura reminded her over a mouthful of tempura. "Ever."

They'd finished lunch and Ino was leaving when she almost bumped into a well dressed man on her way out the door. "Oh, sorry." She was left with the distinct feeling that she was being analyzed like a specimen in a petri dish as he categorized her in his head. 'Ah, but not bad looking.' the blonde thought, taking in the shape of his face. 'Better than Dr. Blue-Eyes.' but sadly shorter.

"Oh Sasori!" Sakura's surprised voice rang out as she peeked up from whatever she'd started writing after they'd finished eating. "What're you doing here?"

"Looking for you, a phone is absolutely wasted when you don't bother answering it." The man intoned, scrubbing a hand through his already messy hair.

"Sasori?" Ino's brows rose. 'First name basis and she didn't even tell me?' She felt a little betrayed. Sasori's eyes had left her and the cool detachment she'd been subject to seemed to fade when he addressed Sakura. Ino stepped around him and turned to watch, mouthing to Sakura a silent _who-the-hell-is this_? As she pointed to the back of his head.

"Yamanka Ino... Sasori." Sakura coughed and awkwardly introduced them. "He's my uh...psychologist and my shadow for the next few months." she probably should have mentioned that to Ino before.

"You have a Shrink?" And a hot one at that. 'Must make for entertaining appointments.' Ino found that the new information was a lot to unpack. "We'll talk about this later...I'm going to get that doctors number, but you better call me tonight."

"What do you need his number for? You're dating Sai."

"Its not for me its for _you,_ stupid." So what if Sakura already had one good looking doctor. There was always room for more. "I'm living vicariously through you Billboard Brow, don't forget it. Nice meeting you Dr. Akasuna." Ino nodded at Sasori and got a careless wave in return as she took her leave.

"Billboard brow?" Sasori echoed, eying her forehead thoughtfully.

Sakura's nose wrinkled. "Ignore that," she stood, stretching out stiff limbs. "What did you need me for? And how'd you know I would be here?"

"You'd know by now if you answered your phone." he responded, taking in her appearance in the span of seconds. It was the first time he'd seen her in casual clothes, a cream colored sweater long enough to be a dress, bare legs and beat up tennis shoes. His eyes might have lingered a bit longer than necessary on the curve of her calf and the indent of her ankle,still trying to figure out how someone her size had kicked down a door. 'Momentum and positioning are key.' he knew that but if he hadn't seen it he wouldn't have believed it possible for her.

"It died." She was just really bad about charging the damn thing and Sasori was clearly unimpressed by the statement when he dragged his eyes to meet hers. 'Was he looking at my shoes?' Sakura frowned, knowing they were pretty scuffed and they probably bothered a perfectionist like him. `it's not like he has to wear them.'

"You need to be cleared to return to work. Why put off for tomorrow what you can do today? Also, if we get it off the table now rather than friday I can take a long weekend." Sasori had helped himself to looking over the stray papers she'd left out; a formal report she'd been writing about Shimenawa. He tsked. "So that fool from the welfare department called and gave her prior notice…" it would explain why she'd already had the boy drugged and prepared to die before they'd ever arrived.

"Do you usually track down patients? How awfully dedicated of you." Sakura arched a brow, watching his eyes rove over her writing. 'He was there for most of it, no reason he can't read it.'

Sasori scoffed, glancing up from the paper with honest amusement in his eyes. "No, you should feel flattered." He couldn't deny that lately things in his life had been rather boring and ever since she showed up things had been less so and it was only natural that he sought out the things that interested him. "I'm working on an essay for a publication. I figured I could use the three day weekend to finish up." it was already done and he was looking to use the time to finish a side project but she didn't need to know that.

"What's it about?"

"Hypnotism and guided hallucinations using local flora."

There was a brief pause as she tilted her head to the side, considering the premise. "Does that actually work? Hypnotism I mean." it was viewed by most reputable sources as junk science. 'Or to put it more politely 'Alternative' medicine.' Sakura was surprised he'd be interested in it.

"Depends on the person but just about anyone can be made _amenable_ with the right chemicals and conditions.I'll forward it to you when it's finished...maybe your phone can last long enough to read it. " Sasori dropped the papers and glanced at the boy sleeping in the hospital bed. "Bringing us back to business; Why are you here?"

It wasn't hard for him to know that she _would _be, especially after the first day when rather than leaving to get cleaned up she'd done so at the hospital and simply borrowed a pair of scrubs until Kakashi showed up with extra found there was very little point in lingering at the bedside of an unconscious stranger and went home. Sasori, in his opinion had already done his good deed that day.

Seeking to busy herself, Sakura moved closer to Nao's bedside and pulled the covers higher over him."There's no one else...and we still need his statement." Although collecting a statement was literally the last of her concerns.

"Do you feel guilty?" It was a question he'd been asking himself over the last few days, the curiosity needling at the back of his brain as he tried to guess whether something in her eyes, in her person would change after having killed someone. 'But she doesn't seem to be becoming darker or harder around the edges.'

"About which part, him laying in this bed or me shooting the person responsible?" Nao's eyelids twitched as he dreamed, still pale against the bedsheets. Beneath his bandaged neck she knew the length of stitches that closed the grisly reminder he'd been left with. 'Not that he needs it, the unseen scars will no doubt be the worst.'

Her shoulders slumped as the stubborn desire to avoid that day fled. "All I can really think is how fast it happened. One second to the next, she's talking and then…" Her breathing changed for a moment, shuddering through her as she remembered the blood and tissue against the wall and that it'd been done by just a finger. Hers to be exact. It was scary to think how fast a life could be ended with just a twitch.

Standing across from her he had a clear view of her face as the same vulnerability he'd seen when he touched her hand in that cramped bathroom flooded her eyes. 'No, she hasn't changed at all.' She still felt bad about taking a life even when the situation necessitated it. 'Will it stay that way if she has to take more lives?' Somehow he got the feeling that it might have been an immutable quality when it came to her.

"I'm not happy that I had to do it but I don't live in a perfect world and sometimes all I can do is make the _least_ worst choice life over hers? That's a weight I can carry even if it means I'll never fully understand what led Shimenawa to all this." There was no doubt that in her own mind Watanabe Botan had simply been doing what she considered right-good even and no matter how far Sakura delved into the woman's past it would never be as illuminating as what she would have heard from the dead woman's lips.

"Is knowing that important?" He knows the answer before she says it. If there is one thing he has learned about her its that Sakura was almost voracious when it comes to sussing out the truth and learning in general if her academic records were anything to go by. She was the type to follow one crumb of information to another until she reached a conclusion, moving on to the next thing and repeating it again. A part of Sasori was very aware of the similarity to himself in that regard.

"Knowing is what keeps things like this," she gestured towards the bed with a sigh. "From happening. So of course it is."

"Why exactly did you choose this field of work?" everyone was driven by something, but with her in this particular case it seemed...personal. 'The nightmares started when it began, she's holed up in this room…' it wasn't coincidental.

Sakura hesitated for a moment, hands slipping back into her sleeves. "How long have you been in Konoha?" The longer he'd been in Fire Country the likelier it was he had heard about the Uchiha massacre. Its because he'd taken her hand in the moment when she felt alone and utterly lost, with someone's life literally slipping through her fingers that she's even broaching the subject with him. 'I'd been planning on never talking about this with him.' She could admit that. She preferred not to talk about it with anyone.

"Six years, I traveled a lot before that...It's not my native country either." Sasori took to leaning against the wall, watching as she fidgeted.

"Oh..." She mumbled, reminding herself to ask where he came from originally another time. "Anyways, about 13 years ago there was an incident. The local Police chief's oldest son snapped and murdered the whole family, including the youngest son."

"Uchiha Itachi." Sasori made a noise of recognition and chuckled dryly at Sakura's surprised reaction. "He's locked up in Akagahara-rather famous in the psychiatric circle. Apparently he hasn't talked to anyone in _years_ despite the piranha's clamoring to get inside his head. Capitalizing on Insanity is rather lucrative in my career." anyone who had the chance to write a book about Sasori would have made a killing. 'Except I don't intend to ever be caught.'

Messy people got caught.

"Yes, him...well I knew him, mostly his little brother though. We were friends." Technically as a little girl she'd fancied herself in love with Sasuke at times and Itachi had always been kind but distant to her, as was his way. "This case has just been dragging those old memories up." Sakura would leave it at that for now. "I guess you could say that I chose this career because I wanted to understand _that,_ to stop those sorts of things." she smiled wanly. "Might be wishful thinking."

It was simple, naive and noble all at once. 'Suits her.' he thought, pondering the things she had left unsaid. "If you wanted to understand it, did you ever look at the official reports regarding the Uchiha Massacre?"

"No." By the time Kakashi had relented and offered them to her Sakura had been 18 and trying to put the whole thing behind her, she'd taken the file and stuffed it into the back of a bookcase. It would have stayed there, forgotten if the nightmares hadn't started. Lately the urge to look had been gnawing at her but there were some things she wasn't sure she was prepared to see.

"Maybe you should, if your lack of sleep is being caused by past trauma, the best thing to do it confront it. _If _you're able." Sasori reached into his inner pocket to withdraw a folded piece of paper, offering it from across the bed.

'That sounded more like a challenge than a suggestion.' Sakura huffed, took the paper and after unfolding it to get a glance of the contents parted her lips in shock. "You already signed the clearance papers without even talking to me?"

Sasori shrugged. "I never had any doubt about your stability." Although if he had, he probably would have signed them anyways just to see what would happen.

Blowing a few stray hairs out her face in exasperation Sakura was caught between thinking it was highly unethical and being oddly appreciative of his faith. 'Although this means I spilled all that stuff for literally no reason.'

"See you next week." he was on his way out the door when Sakura caught him by the sleeve, demure in posture as she raised her eyes to his. Sasori was beginning to notice that Sakura was rather liberal when it came to his personal space. 'Maybe she's just that way with everyone.'

"Thank you...and uh, when Nao wakes up you should come visit." He looked confused at the request so Sakura continued into a rambling explanation. "You helped save his life and he really doesn't have many people who would come to see him, and it's not good to be alone so I just figured…I mean even his parents haven't come once since I've been here."

"Sounds like a good thing."

Sakura didn't even blink at that, since she agreed. "He might want to meet you." her tone was a note shy from whining to get what she wanted. "It'll be good."

'Certainly not for me.' He really didn't care about the kid, he'd helped because it was necessary to his image. As a rule Sasori disliked kids and did his very best to ignore that they existed. "I'll be honest and tell you I find this whole thing pointless. Being here won't change anything for him. All it does is give false hope."

It was better in Sasori's opinion that the boy woke up with no one to count on but himself, at least that way he was already prepared for whatever came next. The sooner he realized he was on his own the better.

"Some hope is better than none." Sakura challenged lips settling into a frown as she wondered by his word choice if somewhere in his past Sasori had been given what he termed false hope. "And there is nothing false about what I'm offering." When he left the hospital Nao would have whatever support she could offer. "Without hope there's no point in anything. We go to sleep every night hoping the sun will rise."

"Someday it won't." Eventually the sun would burn out and they would all be dead. 'And that's discounting all the other cosmic events that could wipe us out or even a particularly virulent disease.' Humanity was by and large doomed one way or another.

"Then we hope for something else." She teased, tugging at his sleeve insistently. "Like escaping to another planet."

"You'll just have to _hope_ I show up then." he wasn't intending to ever do such a thing even when Sakura beamed at him, it wasn't the subdued type he often saw her give out of what he assumed to be politeness but something lighter that made her eyes crinkle just slightly. "Little girl, It's not a promise. Don't look so happy."

'One of these days you're definitely going to say my name.' Sakura thought, refusing to let the lack of it ruin her good cheer.

On a basic level he understood human emotions. He had to be able to read and predict people, to manipulate them to his own ends but when it came to his own feelings they were often muted if not numb depending on the subject. If a person died in front of him Sasori wouldn't feel a thing. Monzaemon's unchanged works, the sound of Bach or even viewing a fine piece of art were capable of making him feel _something_ beyond the normal humdrum he experienced.

So even though he recognizes the feelings that flitter across her face he can't fathom why such a simple thing would make her so happy but apparently she did have hope that he would show up because his arm was relinquished with a brief pat. "Okay okay! Good luck on your writing." she curled her legs underneath her, still grinning as she waved him off.

Sasori decided that she was much like the month she was born in. 'In like a lion, out like a lamb.' She could be a raging storm or a soft gale, but it seemed like she was never truly still. There was something always at work either behind her distinct eyes or plain on her face.

Where he went after leaving the hospital was a few hours drive mostly because he knew to take the back roads to avoid was dark by the time he arrived at a long abandoned property he'd purchased under an assumed name.

He unlocked the gates that barred his way and relocked them after driving through leaving the vehicle he only used when there was larger than ordinary cargo to transport well hidden in the brush. From there he made his way into what most would refer to as the shell of a wrecked building. The windows were blown out, glass cast across the floor and plenty of garish graffiti littered the walls. Nothing would seem out of place unless they had the misfortune of seeing the lower level.

Taking the stairs rather than the hidden access elevator he came to what seemed like a dead end but was in fact a cleverly disguised door. Even if some wayward trespasser were to stumble into the building they would never know something was off. Beyond the door was another series of steps that led further down to a wide corridor.

There was one room off the side that was modeled like a very sparse bedroom which Sasori entered to change out of the stiff clothing he wore to keep up appearances. Setting them neatly off to the side he donned more easily sanitized scrubs and less expensive shoes.

When he was done he moved beyond that room and further down the corridor where there was a much larger area that was pristine enough to make an operating room envious, between the lighting and the equipment it was just as well maintained as one.

The hidden part of the building was the exact opposite of the upper levels down to the fact that there was a singular occupant laid out on the metal table, incapable of moving as he had been from the start three days ago. Sasori ignored the rattling breaths as he gloved his hands, latex snapping against his wrist painlessly and began adjusting things to his liking. "Today's the day." He said, finally addressing the dying man.

Glazed eyes that were incapable of focusing for long turned to him. Only confusion filled them now. The first day he'd been capable of speaking cognitively for intermittent periods but they were on the last day now. "Doc…Doctor?" The word came out as barely recognizable.

"Sometimes." Sasori responded drolly, looking over a series of bladed medical instruments. In his state the man probably thought he was there to help, but that was the last thing on his mind. "We won't be speaking again and you probably don't understand a word I'm saying but you should know this isn't personal." He admired the way the light glinted off the sharp scalpel as he turned it over in his hand.

"I really don't care that you sell people for a living or your lack of scruples." After all, who was he to talk about morality given his choice of pastime. "You simply suited my requirements and provided a good hunt so to speak." getting to a high ranking member of organized crime had been almost as difficult as killing a politician. 'Well, it's hard to tell between the two half of the time anyways.'

Whatever sounds the man attempted to make in his last moments were drowned out when Sasori turned a dial on the work table and the heavy thrumming that began Totentanz filled the room. "How appropriate." he mused as he made his first cut, blood welling in the perfect line he made from throat to navel. By the time he'd finished the man was dead which was just as well because even under the influence of the concoction Sasori had dosed him with having his ribcage cracked, spread open and half removed would have been unpleasant. Even worse if he'd been awake enough to see his organs being removed one by one. [1]

By the time he was finished the corpse was hollow like a carved gourd, ribs shortened so that there was just a concave void inside. He took precise measurements and then filled the empty spot with a spacer to be removed later and went onto the next step without hesitation, rolling the gurney across the floor to the large pressurized vat that awaited..

Normally the process he'd decided to use for his current piece of work was terribly time consuming taking about two months but thanks to the manipulation of the chemicals he'd mixed and the drug that had coursed through the man until his death the process had been shortened by a drastic degree. 'A day of acetone and a day of resin and then onto the rest.' He arranged the body on the frame that would keep it posed until it hardened, and left it there as the container began to fill.

In the meantime he had organs to deal with and a room to clean.

If it weren't for the fact that he had connections to the Black Market Sasori might have worried about being traced thanks to the large quantities of chemicals he'd purchased. ' But money can indeed buy a lot of things.' Sasori thought, sitting at the workbench after he had sanitized the room and his tools. He hummed to himself, looking over the measurements as he began to start on the accompaniment to his newest piece of art.

Constructing the inner workings would likely be the most time consuming.

* * *

Sakura would be the first to admit that she procrastinated when it came to doing things she hated. So on the second day, after Sasori had forwarded the piece he'd been writing she read it in under an hour and decided the proper thing to do would be comment on it honestly rather than open the dusty, yellowing cover of the file Kakashi had handed to her seven years ago.

_Its interesting, _she wrote. _But isn't it a bit of a concern that even used in a clinical setting that these methods could be used for rather nefarious purposes? Assuming that hypnotism works and that the drugs make the experience feel more real than the person guiding the process could make the subject believe whatever they wanted or even do something they normally wouldn't. It seems a bit dangerous in terms of ethics. _

There was already a concern within the psychiatric field about false memories either purposely or accidentally planted and the particular process he spoke about seemed like it would be prime material to create them in a way that would make it even harder to discern reality from fiction.

_On a side note, I noticed you mentioned that many of these psychoactive drugs could be found in their less potent raw forms all over Fire due to its climate and it reminded me of this patch of mushrooms I keep going by on my evening run. I'm starting to worry that some dumb teenagers will try ingesting them only to find that they are highly poisonous...and then the next thing you know I'll be finding dead bodies in the woods in my off hours._

The last part had been meant as a joke, convinced that he wouldn't bother answering. Sasori in no way seemed like the type to have long conversations via text messages. 'But at least now he can be sure that I read it.' With that done all that was left was for Sakura to muster the fortitude to open the Uchiha case file in what was probably the first time in years.

Since it was a copy most of the pictures were slightly grainy but they were detailed enough to make her sick.

When the media had swarmed and claimed it a blood bath they had not been hyping it up for sensationalism. Itachi had taken the well maintained family Katana and sliced his father from shoulder to him, spilling his intestines out but Fugaku had not died right away, living long enough to crawl a ways across the floor leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

Mikoto's death had been less violent one strike and her head had gone from her body, a testament to the quality of the blade and Itachi's wielding of it. With Sasuke's body missing all she had were photo's of his little bare feet making frantic tracks through his parents blood before they stopped, ending in a pool of his own. Like he'd bleed out and been carried away without ever touching the floor. A wave of nausea so strong washed over her, Sakura threw the photos and the notes back onto the dining room table in a haste, leaning over the kitchen sink as she fought to keep her dinner down. 'It's hard seeing them like that…' It was just as hard imagining gentle, quiet Itachi being capable of it. 'Of being so brutal.' She managed in the end, after a few mouthfuls of water to ward off the feeling but the sound of paper fluttering about drew her attention.

Yurei was using a paw to methodically shove the papers off the table and onto the floor, scattering them about the air for her own amusement. "You really are bad." Sakura tsked, collected the parts the cat had yet to paw at and kneeled to pick up the pieces that littered the floor.

The cat meowed unhelpfully, turning up a paw to lick as if the papers she'd been playing with had soiled her.

It was there, in a picture she has missed that Sakura caught sight of it; the head of a pure white snake peeking out of the bowl it was coiled in, settled among the dishes the Uchiha would have had for dinner that night.

A shiver worked its way through her body as goosebumps broke out. The sickening feeling returned twice as strong and the dinging of a received message was lost on Sakura just as she lost the war to keep from throwing up.

* * *

1] Totentanz (The dance of death) by Liszt. Played on piano with accompanying orchestra. Liszt by the way was obsessed with death and He played his piano's so hard he had a habit of breaking strings...and also piano keys. It was the equivalent of smashing a guitar back in ye olden times. He was v popular with the ladies.

The. Plot. Amiright?  
-me halfassing Sasori's project like I used to halfass my school papers- please don't call me on this.

Went through, did a bit of editing on previous chapters.


	5. A Sum Of Stars

Sakura was stressed and that was an understatement. The last few days had been marked by a distinct lack of sleep and circular thoughts that got her nowhere. The nightmares that had abated on the high that followed saving a life had come back after looking in _that_ file. They were different now but just as present.

She was beginning to think she'd opened Pandora's Box. 'and if that is the case there is no putting the mess back inside it.' it was a morrose line of thinking but she couldn't help falling into it. At the very least it kept her from thinking too much about the brain splatter over bathroom tile. Sakura had said that she could live with it and she _could _but that didn't mean she wasn't bothered by it.

Not even the fact that Nao had woken up improved her mood by much. Her interview with him went as well as she could have expected, he was confused, hurt and more than anything fearful about his future.

"Don't make me go home," he'd begged, hands twisting into his hospital gown. "Anything but that."

He was _less_ afraid of the woman who had tried to kill him and nearly succeeded than he was of his own parents. Even though he had the vague recollection of Watanabe coming unhinged Nao still spoke fondly of her. He wasn't even ten and she got the feeling that he would rather be in that bathtub, knife pressed to his throat than at home with his family.

It made Sakura feel like someone was wrenching the very heart out of her. 'I'm glad that this case is over.' even if she intended to support him in his recovery she wasn't sure she could handle any more scummy parents for the time being.

"You're not going home anytime soon, you have a few more days in the hospital to look forward to and after that temporary state custody until they find something more permanent." The words didn't completely soothe him but they did stave off the panic that he seemed on the brink of.

She couldn't exactly call it an upside considering the death toll that came attached but with how badly the welfare system had screwed up in regards to Shimenawa the local politicians were desperate to save some face and paying special attention-so the odds were good that Nao would not be returning home.

"For now you only have to focus on putting one foot in front of the other."It was advice that Sakura should take herself and she was all too aware of it.

She was still trying to process what she had seen and so far her conclusion was a very simple; _nothing good_. 'Its insane, that's what it is. The idea that there is some weird murder cult that's been running around for over ten years…' and that Itachi would just quietly admit to a crime he hadn't commited after his family had been brutally murdererd in his presence. 'But…' if any of that was true then it meant that maybe she had seen Sasuke that night. 'And if I did...where is he now?'

Sakura supposed that was the question of the age, where Sasuke was, dead or _alive_ and she didn't have a clue how to answer it. 'Besides waltzing into Itachi's prison and asking him about it.' which was a whole _other_ kind of mess she wasn't ready to indulge in. Instead she was stuck with her own thoughts because it wasn't like she could tell _anyone_. Not Ino, not Naruto and certainly not Kakashi.

The idea that a group of individuals were running around leaving snakes at murder scenes and had never been noticed before sounded crazy and it would sound even crazier coming from her given her history with the Uchiha. 'Except someone did notice it and then they died…' her thoughts would have continued in that direction if it weren't for the fact that she was due to return back to work.

Sakura left Nao with a brief embrace, a phone of his own preprogrammed with her number and a few others, but most importantly the instructions to call whenever he needed to, for whatever reason.

The amount of paperwork that came with her job was overwhelming at times, according to Kakashi anytime someone fired a weapon or was injured he had at least 25 forms he had to fill out. She didn't envy that. 'You would think we'd be completely digital at this point, but nope.'

As soon as she'd finished signing her name to the official report on Shimenawa and flipped the folder shut a bop administered by what felt like _more_ papers was delivered to her head. "Oh no." Sakura whined, throwing her arms across the desk as if to protect it from any incoming deposit. She didn't have a lead case anymore but she had been looking forward to a bit of a lull before moving onto the next big thing. So far that arsonist she'd been tasked with hadn't killed anyone and was just being a public nuisance.

"Congratulations on closing.'' It was almost cheery coming from Kakashi. "I'd say this is a gift but its more like covert torture." He waggled a cream colored envelope bearing her name in front of her eyes.

The texture and weight of the paper had her swearing she could feel the money behind it. "What is this and why?"

"It looks like an invitation to a boring soiree where politicians and wealthy socialites gossip and pretend to like one another."

"Okay and it's addressed to me, _why_? " Sure, she knew people from influential families but most of the people her age were as uninterested in that type of scene as she was, Ino included and she _loved_ a reason to dress extravagantly.

Kakashi shrugged, taking a good look at Sakura's face now that she was looking up at him. He didn't particularly like what he saw, finding the exhaustion on her face plain to see. "I don't suppose you've seen this?" he held up some thin, cheaply printed local tabloid that covered things from celebrity rumours to sensationalized crimes.

It was the type of paper that one would flip through out of boredom while standing in a check out line. She wouldn't have paid it much mind if it weren't for the fact that there was picture of her on it.

"When the hell did they take that?!" Sakura snatched the magazine away staring at the poor quality photo in disgust. In it she was still covered in Nao's blood and coming down the temple steps with paramedics. She couldn't recall seeing any press at the time. 'Then again I was a bit focused on something else.'

Yamato seemed to sink lower in his seat across from her as though trying to make himself scarce. "Well you have been busy the last week so it's not surprising you missed the news but that one is from a few days 're the face that comes to mind now when people think about it."

"There are more of these?!" Her voice rose in pitch and even Genma whose desk was several feet away raised his head to look, toothpick dangling from his mouth loosely.

It took her a total of five minutes to skim the pertaining article and about that long to go from shock to outrage. Whoever wrote it had interviewed Nao's parents and made them seem like victims. 'If anything they were just as bad as Watanabe.' Sakura thought, having little doubt they'd sold the story to make a quick buck off their son's tragedy.

"Okay I _did_ pressure that guy from the welfare department but they completely mischaracterized what I said." Sakura had in no way implied physical harm, just that he might find himself in the unemployment line. 'Which apparently he did.' it wasn't her fault and she refused to feel bad about it. She had enough on her plate without a guilty conscience to add to it.

Deciding that it was better to continue with his explanation and hopefully prevent Sakura from nitpicking the article anymore Kakashi continued, "Anyways if you weren't being talked about before you certainly are now."

Sakura's thoughts stuttered over the idea that she was apparently a popular topic of conversation when she'd previously considered herself to be something of a nobody despite the fact that she had friends among Konoha's old blood families as she glared down at the magazine like it was her greatest enemy.

"Honestly, if I had known becoming the head of this department after Danzo moved onto covert operations meant I had to play politics as much as I do I would have passed." Kakashi rubbed the knot forming at the back of his neck. He'd tried to avoid the position to begin with five years ago but at the time he'd been the most qualified. 'I don't know what's worse, the paperwork or the politicians.'

Turning her attention from the tabloid to the envelope, Sakura tore it open and looked over the details. "Oh this is for Tsunade-sama?" She'd taken advanced anatomy under the woman during university. She'd left teaching soon after and turned to politics following in the steps of her forefather.

"Rumour is she and Danzo will be competing for the position of Prime Minister." Yamato piped in, sandwich halfway to his mouth.

Scoffing, Sakura dropped the invitation back to her desk. "He couldn't even beat her to the governorship." She still wasn't sure why she had received an invitation. She didn't come from money or old blood like Ino, or even have famous parents like Naruto. 'And I'm not even in a position of power like Kakashi...but if it's for Tsunade I might be able to stand it.' It was months away so she had plenty of time to figure things out.

"Now that I've finished my main job as an unglorified messenger boy I'll be returning to my side job." Kakashi announced, knowing that he was already late when it came to returning calls. 'Ah this job is really going to be the death of me.' or at least his soul, he thought as Sakura looked at him in the _especially_ unimpressed way she seemed to have perfected in the last few weeks.

It wasn't long after he was gone that Sakura found herself rereading the same reports regarding arson in the downtown area that she shut her eyes, intending to rest them for a few moments but time slipped out of hand. Entirely her own fault since she'd spent last night and the night before piecing together a murder map across her basement wall like some conspiracy theorist in a bunker.

Even if she had decided to keep it to herself it didn't mean that she'd put it out of her head. Not by a long shot. The what-ifs and the ramifications were bad but worst of all was having to consider her own motivations for even entertaining the idea. Maybe it was because she was desperate to believe that she hadn't hallucinated that night, that it was easier to believe in a murder cult than to accept that Itachi had just snapped and murdered his family.

Blaming a faceless entity would be emotionally convenient and Sakura knew it. Even looking at it logically the evidence was dicey at best. The only correlation was snakes, which had recently become a new factor in her nightmares. Sakura had never had a fear or disgust for them before but lately the thought of them made her squirm.

Sakura wasn't asleep long enough to dream about anything, it was just like a very long blink until a mostly uneventful day took a turn starting with a savage clap that sounded like thunder or a distant gunshot resounding through her head. It jerked her awake with a start. She was on her feet so fast the chair rolled and clattered to its side.

Stumbling a bit under the fluorescent lighting she bumped into something warm and solid, smelling faintly of wood and spice.

She _liked_ that smell.

Sakura probably would have recognized it a little sooner if she weren't half asleep and she certainly wouldn't have almost snuggled into it. The only thing that saved her from that embarrassing action was the realization that she what she had bumped into was a person and that she knew _them_.

"You look awful." Sasori was looking down at her but it was hard to tell what was going on behind his eyes.

The top of her head was at level with his nose. "And your tie is stupid." not her best come back because in actuality Sakura found the tie was very tasteful; Black with thin threads of gold that looked like smoke, only visible with the right angle of light. She was just feeling spiteful at the commentary. The adrenaline faded but it took time for her heart to stop the riotous beat the sudden awakening had sent it into.

Sasori didn't look bothered in the least by her insult.

Sakura ignored the gazes of the few people left in the office as she picked up her chair and set it to rights."but thanks, just what every girl wants to hear," There was no small amount of sarcasm in her voice. "What are you-" She paused looking down at her desk, noting nothing had been moved but that there was now a very thick book sitting on top of it. "Deadly Harvest?"

Aggravation would be the word to describe what had taken hold of him in the last few days, atypical of his usual state of mind after sending his art off into the world. Sasori wasn't someone who was used to feeling ignored when he spoke, people paid attention. Even Deidara who made the conscious decision to be reckless had the sense to listen. 'Usually.'

Sakura seemed to make a habit of being elusive to reach by phone. He'd taken the time to reply to her days ago and never got a response, the likelihood that her phone was dead that long was improbable. It wasn't unnatural for Sasori to seek out the things that interested him with the way that his mind worked so he didn't question why he'd shown up at her desk that day.

What he _did_ find odd is that what was currently interesting to him was not an object, activity, or concept but a _person_ that he was _not_ trying to kill.

So of course he was annoyed with her. He'd dropped the book on the desk driven by the feeling of being slighted. 'Though, looking at her now I'm wondering if I missed something in my absence.' The last time he'd seen her, Sakura had looked brighter, healthier. Now she was looking close to the exhaustion she'd exhibited when he first met her.

Something had changed in the span of a few days and Sasori was left trying to figure out what. "It's for finding your mysterious fungi, If it's dangerous it'll be there. Unless of course you found a new species."

Sakura had forgotten about that, head too full of snakes and then Nao had woken up. "Ah, that's right! The mushrooms...Still, you didn't have to come all this way for that."

"I wasn't going to but you never replied when I asked what they looked like. So I brought you the tool to figure the answer out for yourself." There he was doing another good deed, it might have been a record if he cared to keep track of that sort of thing.

"You did?'' She didn't remember that. Sure enough when checking her message logs it was there unread. "Sorry it's been a rough few days." Sakura admitted.

"I can tell. Something to do with your last case or a new one?"

"No, nothing like that. Nao woke up and I finished off the Shimenawa report today." She paused on a page. "You know you _can't_ bill me for after hours psychoanalyzing." Sakura actually _hadn't_ known that elderberries were poisonous if they weren't prepared properly.

"Then I'm not asking as your psychiatrist." The admission seemed to surprise her because Sakura looked up from the book, lips faintly parted.

"Who _are _you asking as?" There was a definite teasing lilt to the way that she posed the question.

Sasori thought of it thoroughly before he settled on an answer he _knew_ Sakura would take to. 'A friend." it brought a faint smile to her face. "Are you having nightmares again?" Sakura wasn't smiling after that. No, it had been replaced with the furrow of her brow as she seemed to debate amongst herself whether to answer the question or not.

If she were being unreasonable she could have placed the blame for her sleepless nights at his feet, he had been the one to suggest that she go looking into the past. 'But I was the one who took it as a challenge.' She sighed and shut the book to give him her full attention. "I looked at the Uchiha case and I saw-as one would expect, some unpleasant things. That's all."

The next question he _would_ have asked pertained to the specifics of what she had seen but the office door that bore the name Hatake swung open just as Sasori opened his mouth. Sakura swiveled her chair around to face the door when her name was called.

"Someone just came out of their hiatus." Kakashi tossed a binder that was deftly caught within her hands and then proceeded to dump a whole stack of them-5 by her count on her desk. "There's a body in Sozo Open Air Art Museum. Local officer's think it's one of Hiruko's. I told them you were on your way."

'So much for an uneventful day.' Sakura thought fighting back a yawn, the name Hiruko was vaguely familiar to her but she was having trouble recalling the specifics. "Who had the case before?" She asked glancing through the file he'd tossed on her way.

"The same person who had your desk before they retired." Kakashi waved a hand at their guest in absent greeting.

When Sasori had agreed to seeing Sakura as a patient and later to be a shadow in her work he hadn't considered _his_ dossier could end up on _her_ desk. There were at least ten other people in her unit excluding Kakashi. 'I suppose it's better her than the Bonsai keeper.' in this way it allowed him to be on the inside of the case and even if he was certain they would find nothing connecting him to those murders. 'Or any others.' it didn't hurt to keep a careful eye on the investigation.

Or to mislead the hounds if they got too close.

"Don't you have a job of your own and patients to see?" Sakura was looking over some photos of previous bodies with a rather studious expression.

"Part of the luxury of owning a private practice is that you make your own hours." Sasori was already through with his appointments for that day and even if he had not been he would have canceled.'I wonder what the last agent wrote in that file.' he'd have to look through it after she had finished.

From a quick read through what she'd gleaned was that her killer didn't just hack and slash bodies, they _transformed _them. 'The last body they dropped was a year ago and it was lacquered and etched.' and there were at least five more listed. 'A thorough reading is going to have to wait.' she decided, rising from her chair. "We could be out for hours." Sakura warned him, it was already verging on late afternoon.

"Then let's not waste time." he'd wondered once what she would see in the face of his artistry and now he was going to get a perfect view of her first impression. Sasori had not intended it but it was not an unwelcome event.

The museum wasn't exactly close and her estimate of how long they would be gone didn't really factor in time spent on scene. The ride there was mostly spent in silence with Sakura using every stoplight as an opportunity to refresh herself on the specifics of the assumed killer.

Sasori didn't seem amused with her attempts at multitasking while driving and at one point threw the file into the back seat putting an end to her research and earning himself a few rather sour looks. Kakashi had basically thrown her into this with no prep time and she was going in more or less blind.

There were a few media trucks and photographers being kept at bay by a barricade being guarded by uniformed officers. "Kiba!" Sakura greeted one upon recognizing him. "Surprised to see you here."

A wide grin stretched over the man's face. "Yea well, as you can see it's a bit of a circus at the moment, they needed all the hands they could get. Haven't seen you in forever, you missed the last get together!" Kiba scrubbed a hand over his facial scruff thoughtfully. "Nice work on Shimenawa by the way." he lifted the police tape for her to slip under.

"Him too." Sakura jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. "That was just a lucky break on my part. You should shave that thing..."

"No way, it took forever to grow this and beards are _in_. How's your cat?"

Sakura disagreed but it wasn't her face so she said nothing more on the subject. 'I don't have to rub faces with it, so it's really not my business.' she decided. "Still dragging half dead animals into the house as tributes."

"Exactly why dogs are superior." Kiba looked towards Sasori. "Who is this by the way?"

" I really don't have a preference for cats over dogs." Sakura insisted for the hundredth time. She had a cat because her parents had left her one. 'Not that I _don't_ like her or anything.' Yurei was sweet when she wasn't dropping things all over the place. If it wasn't dead gifts then the blasted cat was pawing things off high surfaces just to see them fall. 'Broke my favorite coffee cup too…'

"Dr. Akasuna." Sasori learned to stomach small talk in low doses but he still had an abhorrence for it. He didn't feel the need to say much more after showing the credentials he'd been given. "Girl, can we move the pleasantries along?"

Kiba tsked. "It's not like that bizarre body is going anywhere." but he was on the move, waving them along. 'What's with Sakura and weird nicknames? Ino calls her Forehead, with Sai it's Ugly and now Girl.' and then there was Lee and and the whole Flower business. 'Never thought I'd think it but Naruto might be the normal one.

The museum was essentially an outdoor park spread over several acres, as they walked Sakura studied someone of the pieces they passed along the way there were twisted, metal abstract sculptures glinting in the light of the setting sun and stately carved stone figures of mythological subjects like the infamous Kyuubi with its twisted nine tails. Further along there were some bronze castings of distant historical figures including a Sage whose name had long been lost to time.

While they walked, Kiba filled her in on what they'd already figured out by questioning the staff. The body had apparently been in the museum for a total of 4 days , somehow it had replaced a new exhibit they were supposed to be receiving-someone had switched shipping labels and the staff placed it without realizing the deception. They probably wouldn't have realized it if the person whose actual work was meant to be displayed hadn't questioned them on it.

What had started as a simple inquiry had evolved into something much bigger and it was only due to the fact that someone had been familiar with Hiruko's signature that Sakura found herself on scene. Ten minutes into the walk she finally caught sight of the fuss.

Freely standing on its own two legs, the hands were clasped over its face baring most of its physical features from the world."I can see why it took them so long to notice." The faint discoloration of the skin was really the only way to tell something was amiss, that and the paper trail as it would later turn out.

"It's impossible to tell the cause of death just by eyeballing it. I can't tell how they died, or when." The medical examiner explained when questioned. "I mean obviously whoever they are is missing a good portion of their insides and well...I think the state of the body speaks for itself."

Sakura tapped a gloved knuckle against a hardened arm. "They made a plastinate? That had to have taken some time." Not to mention space and materials. "Honestly, as crass as it might be I have to say I really appreciate the fact that it's not rotting." she could do without the bugs and the smell. "Nice change of pace." she mumbled, although Sakura found it a little disconcerting the way it made the victim seem less...human and more like a mannequin.

It hadn't taken as long as she probably thought. Straightfaced, Sasori listened to her faint mumbles, he appreciated that she liked to think to outloud-he wasn't a mind reader afterall. He was just very good at interpreting body language and how _other_ people tended to think.

The medical examiner was idling about looking rather lost with nothing to do. "Well, hopefully we can get an Identification from fingerprints or dental records-as soon as you finish we're set to pack up."

Sakura didn't seem to pay them much attention too busy with her own thoughts. "Uh Uh."

Tucking her skirt against the back of her thighs Sakura crouched to get a better look at the clock. The face was curved to fit seamlessly into the body, there were three overlapping rings, one for the hour of the day another to denote the cycle of the moon and a final one depicting the symbols of the zodiac.

The times were correct as far as Sakura could tell. "They built an astronomical clock inside of a body, from scratch…" Because like hell it would have fit so perfectly otherwise. "and then managed to sneak it into an art museum. They had to have known beforehand that the museum had commissioned a new addition."

The faint increase in heat and the scent she'd come to associate with Sasori preceded him leaning over her shoulder attempting to see what she was seeing.

"What do you think?" Sasori questioned his cheek about an inch from her own.

She really wasn't in the headspace to consider when he got comfortable with being so close, Sakura wasn't so unobservant that she hadn't noticed him tense up every time she had grabbed hold of him to move him along when chasing down Shimenawa.

The signs of the zodiac were crafted with exquisite detail from the curled horns of the Ram to the delicate, miniscule scales of Pisces. They were white engravings on a ring of black and reminded her of cameos. Sakura could hear the ticking of the hands and gears as close to it as she was. If she focused only on the mechanical component she could almost forget that it was built inside of a body. "It's sort of...disturbingly beautiful." but there was something hollow about it and she didn't mean it in the physical sense.

Sasori didn't preen at the compliment.

"Seems like a lot of work for something that's just going to be destroyed." Kiba mumbled.

"True, unless they already got what they wanted out of it. It's been here a few days, people have been taking pictures of it, talking about it, the news is out in full force. As an artist what more could they want? The image will endure even if the structure doesn't." Sakura explained. 'There is never any guarantee that the original will survive but even a copy is better than nothing.'

What mattered to him was that they were seen and as long as that happened it wasn't too much of a loss to Sasori. 'It's a bit strange to be seen and unseen all at once.' he mused, wondering if she had come to that conclusion based on what she read in the file compiled by someone else or by her own conjecture in the here and now.

Kiba seemed disgruntled by the statement. "He thinks he's an artist?" he didn't see anything particularly artistic about it. 'Just weird and creepy.'

Sakura could have argued against gendering the killer if she didn't agree that it was mostly likely a male. "He is. It doesn't matter if you or I appreciate his...form of _canvas_ but strictly defined art is the application of skill and imagination to create something intended to be appreciated for the purpose of beauty or to invoke feelings or thoughts." It was a rather clinical explanation on her part but art had never really been her subject.

No, Sakura was math, science, and reading. The concrete subjects-the most artistic she got was martial arts.

"Right, sounds like you've been hanging out with that weirdo too much." Kiba got a dirty look for that comment.

It was one thing for Sakura to refer to Sai as weird it was another to hear it from someone else. She found the engraved signature that had been left on every other body at the back of the neck reading Hiruko and pondered the significance of the chosen pseudonym. 'Its written as _Leech Child_.' The same as one of Ebisu's other names, when before he had been a God of Fortune he had been misfortune enough to be born into the world without bones and abandoned by his parents. [1]

Sakura wondered which part of that had spoken to the person who used the name as his own. 'Ebisu is the maker of judgements and the granter of wishes. Hiruko is the deformed, abandoned child.' Not only that but he was associated with things that washed ashore. 'Like dead bodies.' The thing about her job was that it was mostly based on conjecture and seizing on small details to create a bigger picture, never knowing if the focus was correct until who she was seeking was right in front of her eyes.

Inevitably her eyes wandered back to the clock, wondering if she was missing some significant detail. "You know most of these clocks have some sort of time specific mechanism, the Orloj in Prague has the Parade of Apostles and the one in Strasbourg has a few too." She was tempted to accelerate the hands of the clock manually to see what would happen. 'But no one has reported there being any automata or chiming.' Her parents had a second honeymoon to Europe not long before their fatal car wreck and her father had talked endlessly about the popular sights. He had really liked the churches. [2]

_There was something lovely about them_, he'd said.

There _was_ a mechanism inside but it wasn't programmed with the typical hours of noon or midnight but for the very specific time of three am. 'The midnight of the soul.' As it had been called and not coincidentally the time it took for the mixture of chemicals to do their work.

Sasori adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves, having left his jacket in the car. Late July in the Country of Fire meant the air was humid and thick, making his hair curl more then it would have otherwise. Wind had been miserably hot in the day but at least it was dry in most places.

Sakura had glanced over her shoulder and he knew, seeing the way her fingers seemed to waver decisively about the hour hand's what she was considering. 'Clever girl.' It was without spite that he warned her. "Is it a good idea to mess with time?"

"That thing could be like, booby trapped or something." Kiba advised when he saw her gloved fingers pushing the hands along gently.

"I don't think that it is, killing the viewer would sort of defeat the purpose of creating it…" a thought occurred to Sakura a moment after she spoke; the idea that maiming a person might be another story. It was too late to stop, she'd already pushed past 12 am and proceeded all the way to three when an audible click sounded out. The once seamless clock face split in two, pushing out like a pair of double doors with a sharp clack.

It wasn't lethal but it frightened Sakura like a Jack-in-The-Box would someone unfamiliar with it, enough so that she flew backwards into Sasori, the lizard part of her brain that served as the processing unit for fight or flight screaming danger even as his hands steadied her by the shoulders.

A chime rang out through the night.

"Don't be afraid." Sasori was looking beyond her with bridled mirth. "it's only death." he said, turning her to face the strange creation he was responsible for.

At the center of the opened chest there was a diminutive skeleton ringing a bell no bigger than her pinky nail. Sakura silently cursed herself for letting Kiba get into her head. "Real funny," she grumbled, the chiming of the bell had ceased after three succinct rings.

It was hard for Sasori to tell if she meant those words for the killer that she was chasing or for him when they were one and the same.

Kiba didn't get it at all. 'But that's why I do regular police work and not the crazy shit.' Up until now the weirdest thing he'd dealt with was some guy tweaking on drugs screaming in the streets about how bubbles were going to melt his brain.

'This sort of thing has to have a meaning. In the same way that everything left behind by Watanabe did.' She took hands because she couldn't completely let go and consecrated their bodies in death when they couldn't be in life. 'So what is the meaning of this?' Sakura hadn't moved away as she thought. 'It's not like Shimenawa, those murders were emotional and the method was ultimately sloppy.' What she saw now was methodical and clinical.

"Death and Time..." She recalled Sasori had said something similar to that once. There was so much to consider because what she was seeing before her was different, not just compared to her last case but to the other bodies in Hiruko's file. His theme and style changed with every kill. He was..._adaptable_ and that was worrying.

Sasori didn't have to see her face to know her mind was galloping even when her body was still. She hadn't moved except for the loosening of tense muscles when she realized she'd been pointlessly spooked. His hands had lingered without purpose. There was a time in his adolescence when he had hated touching or being touched until he learned the necessity of being able to interact in such ways. "What are you thinking?" His hands fell from her as he put aside the question of why he'd touched her in the first place, he could have easily stepped aside before she flinched into him.

"That he won't be easy to catch. I got lucky with Shimenawa; a combination of being in the right place at the right time and a murderer who, in retrospect-was _messy._" She gestured towards the body with frustration laced in her words."This person is methodical and meticulous. I get the feeling that they don't leave anything behind that they don't _want _to be found. This could take years."

'It could take forever.' Which was exactly what he counted on.

It was probably thanks to the anatomy courses she'd taken forever ago that Sakura could pick out the precision in which the killer had cut bone and skin before they had plastified the body.

"They carved up a person, turned them into a, uh...sculpture-a timepiece? and _then_ snuck it into a museum." There was nothing simple about what she was looking at. "He might want attention but he has no _intention_ of being caught."

Sakura wasn't wrong. ' except for the low view of herself.' Her instincts were keen, her mind was quick and even if those traits could be a potential hazard Sasori admired them. ' She should be giving herself more credit than leaving her success up to coincidence.' It dissatisfied him enough to make him tsk audiably.

"You sound like you disagree." Sakura looked over her shoulder with a frown.

"Only on the low opinion you seem to hold of yourself." he countered wrly. She'd even allowed that scrubby looking officer to get inside her head, throwing off her initial correct instinct.

'I feel like I've been insulted and complemented at once.' it might have been a speciality of his. Unsure of what to say in reply Sakura turned back to surveying the scene, a little more distracted by his statement than she would have liked.  
It was well past nine by the time she called it quits and she was basically starving. "There are a bunch of vending machines in the plaza." Sakura suggested.

"We are not eating out of a vending machine." Sasori had allowed a lot of things, he let her drag him around, he let her drive and go hours without taking a break but that was one indignity too far for him and he had, at one point in his life been accustomed to the occasional military ration.

There was a forlorn sigh because she really _should_ have anticipated the refusal considering her first meeting with him Sakura had assumed that he was one of those people who only ate organic.

"Keys." his hand was held out expectantly. "I know of a place close by."

Sakura hesitated for a moment before deciding there would be no harm in allowing it. "If we end up going to come place with calf brains on the menu we're going to have a problem." A huge problem.

"In some places that's considered a delicacy." Sasori was definitely smirking as her face scrunched up. "But I never had a taste for that sort of thing. Anything else you'll refuse to eat?" She was expressly clear that she couldn't handle anything spicy and frowned upon veal and lamb in some odd moral stance he didn't understand but saw no point in arguing against.

Sakura spent a moment going over the notes she had scribbled down, knowing that for the moment she was stuck. What she needed to progress was in any other considerations was who the victim had been. Identity would reveal commonalities with the other's Hiruko had killed and by those similarities motive would become more clear. Or at least that was her hope. 'It works in theory but looking for similarities hasn't exactly helped me with the whole Snake business.'

What she needed was fresh leads all around. 'And I think I might have an idea.' Sakura thought when Kiba crossed her line of sight. "I'm going to say goodbye and then we can leave." It was a long shot but putting feelers to the ground never did any harm. She left Sasori behind to catch up to Kiba. "I want to ask a favor."

A grin that bordered on wolfish broke across Kiba's face. " What kind of favor? Did you decide you like the beard after all?" He teased, leaning close to her face.

"No." Sakura's face went red as the blush seeped through her skin. "It's a work related favor." She knew Kiba well enough to know he didn't mean anything beyond getting a reaction. "I just want you to keep your eyes and ears open for anything weird involving, uh...snakes. but do it quietly please."

"Snakes? What for?" Kiba considered the question for a moment before deciding hr might be better off not knowing. "Nevermind. It's probably better I don't know, but yea I'll let you know if I hear about anything...serpent like." He shooed her. "You'd better hop off, your guy is looking like someone dumped salt in his tea." That doctor had been looking their way, or rather Sakura's the whole time.

"He hates waiting of any sort." Sakura explained with the roll of her eyes. "He's about as impatient as any kid if you ask me."

Kiba's instincts seldomly steered him wrong and at that moment they were telling him that impatience was not the only reason the doctor's eyes had gone sharp. "Better get going then." Some dogs were best left sleeping in his opinion.

"Doll, save your flirting for when someone's not waiting." Sasori said when they reconvinned and began making their way back to the car. It's not so much the flirting or even having to wait that had him bristling but the fact that he thought she could do so much better than someone who looked like they rolled around in grease and probably had the wits of a jellyfish. 'They would be ill grouped.' he decided. It would be like putting a rare first edition book on the same shelf as mass produced paperbacks. 'Disgusting.' It just wasn't meant to occur.

"I wasn't flirting." Sakura didn't find it to be much of his business even if there _had_ been any flirting going on and being called doll well that was just _ugh_. 'Especially the way he said it.' She wasn't going to comment on the name because complaining about being referred to as Girl had just made him decide to stick to it. "I've known him since I was in grade school." most of her friends consisted of people she knew from adolescent days.

'She says that as though it means flirting is _impossible_.' But Sasori wasn't going to quibble with her about how it looked, she'd just insist otherwise.

By the time they were back in the car and on their way to dinner Sakura had decided she was _not_ through speaking on the subject and popped her head up from one of the files she had retrieved from the back to say "There was no flirting. Kiba just happens to like getting a rise out of people and unfortunately for me he knows that I blush easily." Hinata was about the only person Kiba didn't mess with and Shino was impossible to fluster.

"Is that so?" It was said in the same way he said most things, flatly. Almost as though he weren't listening at all but he was hyper aware-as he always was even as they lapsed into silence. At one point Sakura had commandeered the radio, citing the-_apparently, _in her words _universal_ rule that the person riding shotgun got to pick what played. It meant that the station was constantly changing when something she didn't like came on.

There was one song that she seemed to particularly like; an old, slow tempoed ballad undergirded by solemn guitar playing as the mournful voice of the singer crested and he could more so feel rather than hear Sakura's humming along to it in the same way vibrations traveled a spider's web.

It was distracting but not unpleasant.

Sasori preferred preparing his own food for a variety of reasons, the first being that doing so limited the chances of being poisoned and the second was ensuring the quality but he did make a point to know the acceptable alternatives around him.

The place that he took her to was upscale enough that the wrong attire could get a person turned away but thanks to Sakura's consistent combination of a blouse and skirt it wasn't a concern. They were late diners which meant there were not a lot of people, even so Sasori was picky about seating wanting a table that had a clear view of all the entrances but against a wall.

It reminded her of the same watchfulness that had been drilled into her at the academy. Knowing who was coming and going gave a person time to react if something unfortunate occurred but it left her wondering where Sasori had picked up the habit. It was mostly seen in people with military or law enforcement training and their families by extension. "You said that you traveled a lot, where were you originally from?" So what if it was nosey, she was an investigator by occupation and they were in his own words _friends_.

"Wind, Suna to be specific." There was no harm in answering that question.

It was hard to picture him coming out of the desert much less a country that was chronically embroiled in civil wars and dictatorial regimes-although since the youngest son of the last Kazekage had taken the mantle things were looking hopeful, or so the pundits said. Sakura kept abreast of national security and politics enough to know that _everything_ had to be taken with a grain of salt. 'What might appear stable from the outside could be fit to crumble like a sandcastle facing the rising tide.'

"You'll be going home for Bon then?" Most people took off to return home, to clean their family graves and attend their home festivals that particular year Bon would be falling in august, a few weeks away. [3]

"No. I'll be operating as normal."

"Oh. And I thought I was a workaholic." At least she took off for the holidays. "Your family will probably miss you though." it was said absently as she glanced over the menu, the prices probably should have made her cringe and she might have if it weren't for the fact that she was making a fair bit of money that she wasn't exactly spending. Her schooling was paid off and rent was a property tax once a year. The most she spent per month was on takeout and on occasion a good pair of shoes.

"No one that matters." When he said it there was something distinctly icy underlying it. Or perhaps that was simply her reading into the words.

Sakura realized she might have touched something without meaning too. 'As it turns out even psychiatrists have their issues.' He'd said that they were friends, but given how new that was she decided not to prod at it-yet. A waitress came around not long after the hostess had wandered off, recommending wines-or sake if they preferred, as if the two of them were on a date. The thought of it made her skin feel hot because if she thought about it, this was _exactly_ the sort of place for that sort of thing. 'But it's not like that.'

Of course he saw the color breaking across her face and wondered at it curiously. 'I guess she really meant it when she said she blushed easily.' and _easily _meant at nothing.

Neither of them were inclined to drink that night and proceeded with ordering dinner.

Every meal was designed as a set and even if she had no idea what lobster cappuccino was it came with the steak she'd ordered and the frothy bisque turned out to be one of the best things she ever put in her mouth even if it lacked caffeine. There was however, coffee for her and some herbal tea for him served with dessert. While she waited for her coffee to cool she pulled out the photo's she'd unclipped from their files and began to go through them like flash cards. Her eyes darted across them as if she were reading lines he couldn't see.

'What she sees is a fraction of what I've done.' Not all of them had been so distinct and sometimes it hadn't been about art but necessity. The seven that she saw were just a handful. "You keep looking as though you'll find something new."

Sakura blew the steam over the rim of her cup. "I'm looking for patterns," she tilted her head as she glanced at him. "The same as I did before. Connecting bits of evidence to craft a theory of who they are."

He had set his tea cup down without a clatter, chin resting on his interlocked knuckles. Sakura wondered if anyone had ever told him it was rude to put his elbows on the table. The light of the restaurant was low but every table had a decorative candle floating atop a shallow dish at the center and the light caught in his eyes, turning them a golden red. They held the same glint she'd seen when they'd been speaking about the prints that lined his office corridor. That look made her stomach flutter and her mouth go dry.

"Well?"

'Maybe Ino is right and I really do need to get out more.' Sakura took a long sip of the expresso she'd added sugar and cream to in an attempt to chase the feeling away. Some purists would say she'd ruined it but she couldn't abide anything too bitter.

"He obviously hates decay." She tapped at the photo's she'd spread across the table. "He's gone through extensive measures to make sure they don't rot...and he's clearly very skilled at mixing chemicals and knows his way around bodies but he also built a machine with some pretty exact measurements. This person is for lack of a better word: extraordinary...none of these bodies have a clear cause of death; no broken bones, no bruising-besides what's been done after death as far as anyone can tell. Hiruko is anything but average and catching them is..."

"Impossible." Sasori supplied, finding that he didn't dislike her assessment. It was a bit enthralling to be seen and unseen all at once,

"No, difficult." Extremely so. "Even perfect crimes have flaws. It's just a matter of finding them. Everything has meaning whether I see it now or not." her nails drummed idly against the table. "Though I do wonder why he chose that type of clock. Maybe he just wanted the extra challenge." Sakura's lips twisted into a mischievous smile as she pointed at him. "Let me guess, a Virgo?" Picky and clean, a perfectionist with attention to detail.

It was partially true that much of it had been about the difficulty of the endeavor but there was also the subtle hallmark he'd left in plain sight among the 12 signs, confident that no one would pick up on it. "Wrong, Scorpio. And according to the medical forums you filled out you're an Aries." In many ways the Ram suited her, fearless and energetic, but atypical of the sign she was focused on whatever she pursued until the end. 'But no one is the sum of their stars.' There were always deviations.

"I guess that one makes sense too. Clever and perceptive." Sakura hid a faint giggle behind her cup because really, his name and his star sign matched-and then there was that scorpion on his office desk. 'Talk about branding.' She recalled reading somewhere that they were supposed to have intense eyes and found that he matched it. 'And unfortunately for me I did get the whole high forehead aspect of mine.' [3]

Thinking about it she wondered how she had ever pegged him for a Virgo to begin with. Sasori fit with intense and mysterious. 'They might as well be synonyms.' The bill came due but before Sakura could ask to split it he'd already paid.

"Don't you know? It's the universal rule that the one who picks _pays_." Sasori was using her own words from earlier against her because just as she was attempting to learn the two sides of him he had decided to do the same, the fact that his dossier had landed in her lap made it a necessity where as before it had simply been a matter of curiosity.

He would have to wait for an opportunity to do some sleuthing of his own about _her_. The thing that Sakura had forgotten about Scorpio's was that they were manipulative and secretive and in that Sasori was no exception.

* * *

[1] ヒルコ is the writing for Sasori's puppet. 蛭子 is the writing for Ebisu's version but both are pronounced as Hiruko...Japanese is a confusing language. Lets just assume that for all intents and purposes that they mean the same thing though the writing is different because Sakura's theorizing does sort of match up to Sasori's past in both canon and here. Though his abandonment was not intentional it is what he felt and there is certainly something very deformed about him when it comes to his headspace.

[2] please check Wiki for "Astronomical clock" if you are curious. Alas , unlike a03 despises links.

[3] Bon is the festival for the dead in Japan and places with a strong Japanese influence like Hawaii. It's not a national holiday but you do typically get leave to go home and clean the family graves, give offerings at ancestral shrines or temples. There is also the carnival-like aspect of it with street foods, games, the wearing of Yukata and traditional dance and at the end releasing lanterns on water to guide spirits home.

[4] Aries, while good at starting projects are kind of abysmal at finishing them. (I would know, I am one. And as testament to that stereotype just look at all the stories I have started and remain unfinished.) Of course people are not typecast into their signs and there are exceptions-Sakura for instance, despite her star sign she's not the type of person to start something and leave it undone.

There are also physical attributes associated with star signs, Aries' have high foreheads, Scorpio's intensive, hawk eyes...Capricorns have strong jaws.( I fact checked and I also have a high forehead rip.)

And if that's not enough zodiac factoids for you there are also body parts associated with the signs. Aries' is the head/face. Scorpio is the uh, reproductive organs. Aries/Scorpio relationships are characterized simply as "They have a tendency to be really attracted to one another, they argue a lot because scorpio is heavy af and they both want to be in control but they are really steamy."

I don't know any scorpio's irl but just gonna say fact check true on Sasori's account in my head canon. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Ahem, sorry this is so late. Just going to be honest and say I wrote this thing like three times, each time more frustrating than the last. Before ever typing anything up I start out writing on paper because it helps me process what I'm doing, so my entire room was just littered with crumpled up papers for days until I proceeded to do what I refer to as "frankensteining" a chapter. I basically took pieces of each draft and stitched them together. You ended up with a longer chapter than usual and an unofficial date.

Sasori, Sasori, my man...you gotta like, stop slapping your name all over stuff. Even if you _are_ being sneaky about it. More amusingly these two are just going to start snidely throwing one another's words back at the other. "Oh but you said we were friends, remember?" and " It's a universal rule, didn't you know?"

The one thing I can say I have honestly learned as a writer is that just because you're having trouble doesn't mean give up. That's basically been the death of many a story for me. I hit a snag and I lose interest. I've learned that the best approach is to just keep hammering at it until you get somewhere decent. (I guess this goes back to me being an Aries, we can be impatient fuckers.)

Mostly unimportant but the song Sakura was listening to was Meiko Kaji's Urami Bushi. She also sung the song Shura no Hana (flower of carnage) and acted in the film Lady Snowblood which went on to inspire Kill Bill-where Urami Bushi was featured in Vol 2. High recommends all around and I swear I'm not having more story ideas over here.

(ಢ⊱ಢ ｡)

PS: **Alexia**, you gotta get a verified username so I can like actually respond to you lmao. You write me so many nice reviews and I always want to say something back but I can't because guest username. IT MAKES ME SAD. but like yea its "problematic" to ship a murderous nutbag like Sasori with Good girl Sakura...unless you consider it like he does which is "Well I never did anything bad to her...for the most part." and also that the whole of Naruto is problematic since it involves child soldiers, but its fiction and I try not to get too tangled up in the morality. -shrug- I mean if I did I would enjoy basically nothing lmao. Though it is a moral quandary that Sakura has to face at some point...


	6. A Gaze Intently Fixed

As much as Sasori viewed him as a fool determined to die young, or worse live out the rest of his days locked behind the bars of an insane asylum Deidara was not an idiot, he was actually rather observant and terribly cunning in his own right. What Sasori viewed as haphazard and shoddy decision-making skills were in fact conscious choices to be reckless because a boring life just didn't suit him. In Deidara's opinion it was better to die young and vibrantly. 'But not this young.' he thought, watching the way Sasori's eyes skimmed along the backside of the woman chattering on the phone in his waiting room.

It was just plain odd how his apathetic eyes lingered on her legs.

Up to that singular moment Deidara had always considered Sasori to be too cold blooded to take an interest in women. 'Or anyone.' He knew the doctor wasn't above using people for one reason or another, typically in a ploy to seem _normal _but he was never enthusiastic, and he never really seemed to look_ at _them so much as through them.

Sometimes he thought the older man was a machine going through the motions of its code which occasionally glitched and gave a view of the numbers that made up the whole. The realization that his psychologist was a murderer was easier to take in then what he was seeing.

They were two similar creatures despite their differing views on life and art, the one true thing he supposed they shared was a desire for destruction and that was what ultimately led them to the same building a few years ago. 'Me to set explosives and him to drop a body.'

It worked out in the end, Deidara got to blow something up and Sasori got to destroy evidence-though he came very close to having_ two_ bodies to dispose of. They didn't continue to have weekly sessions after that for the bomber's mental health but more so to make sure secrets stayed _secrets _and because sometimes it was nice to be seen plainly for what one was.

'Maybe he's just thinking about hacking them off or something.' That would be _normal_ compared to what he was seeing-or _thought_ he was seeing. 'But that's just not his style, everything has to be theatrical.' Sasori liked to act as though the two of them were separate animals but the truth was they simply wore different coats.

"I can't this weekend, I'll be out of town for uh...Business."

Sasori was suddenly less interested in her legs and more attentive to what she was saying and Deidara drew a sense of relief from it. 'Fuck un, whats the world coming to when you're squicked out that your doctor isn't an andriod?'

"Get lost." The smooth voice dictated, cutting through Deidara's thoughts. Sasori was glancing at him from the peripheries of his eyes, whatever had been in his gaze before fled to places unknown.

The blonde shook off the lingering unease, Sasori was a big boy and he had to know that women were nothing but trouble. 'Especially one involved with the law.' he knew how to spot a firearm holster. "Right. Wouldn't want to hold you up, un." It wasn't his business, but he did _almost _feel bad for whatever her name was. The things that were of interest to Sasori were seldom wholesome. 'Or maybe she's fucked up too.' His head ached from thinking about it and the palms of his hands were itching to knead something, feet quick to lead him away from the source of trouble instead of _towards_ it for once.

Sakura, completely unaware that Sasori was lurking in his office door with a keen ear continued on staring at a wall as she spoke. "I'll be in Miyagi for the weekend but next Friday for sure. I promise. No, I'll be leaving tonight, and I'll be back late Sunday-Alright you too Ino..."

'Miyagi is a spit of nothing closer to wave then it is Konoha.' Driving would take forever but there was a bullet train that traveled that direction. Sakura spoke of business but Sasori knew that there was nothing of Hiruko, of _him_ to be found where she was going. Which left three options; she was on entirely the wrong track which would be good for him or she was working on something unrelated to him-also a positive. 'Or the business is _personal_.' which made it an unknown but also presented an opportunity. He was looking for a chance to pry into the pieces of her he couldn't see and now one was presenting itself in short order.

The phone call ended, and Sakura let the device drop into the bag she carried.

"You're making me wait." There was a twitch and a jerk signifying he'd surprised her. It'd only been a few days since his work had been discovered and she was still sporting the same faint shadows beneath her eyes as before.

Sakura was rummaging around in her bag as she moved through the gap he'd stepped aside to create. The gale she left upon passing him carried the faint scent he'd come to recognize as vanilla underlying something he had no recognition for other than green and floral in nature.

"Aha, found it!" Sakura cheered, as she dropped her bag on the floor with a thump, waving the book triumphantly as she cracked it open. "I am so lucky I didn't fall into these things." she pointed to the well-illustrated depiction of Poison Fire Coral. "I mean, what the hell-just touching them can make skin peel and hair fallout."

Despite the lack of sleep that plagued her, Sakura was oddly cheery discussing what was arguably one of the more dangerous fungi he could think of in its unaltered, natural state. "Very." Sasori agreed, so far he had not found himself particularly eager to see her maimed or worse. 'Though if she were to go tumbling head first into a patch of high toxic mushrooms it would be entirely her own fault.' and _almost_ a pity.

"But touching them is nothing compared to eating them; brain shrinkage, organ failure, necrosis." and of course inevitable death, provided timely treatment did not occur. Sakura supposes that the color of them alone should have been enough warning that they were dangerous. That was typically the rule in nature. The more dazzling the color the more toxic and the fungi were a bright, coral red as their name suggested. In the right lighting the color of Sasori's hair almost seemed a match.

"And to think you were worried about a bunch of teenagers getting high off them when what you _should_ have been worried about was that they'd give themselves a Darwin award." Sasori replied, having shut the door and taken a seat at his usual languid pace.

Sakura huffed at his words, clearly discomforted by the thought. "Somehow that statement didn't make me feel better." She'd rather neither happened.

"Better they off themselves then have a bad psychotic trip and become menaces." Besides anyone stuffing something into their mouth should have a very good idea of what it was and where it came from in his opinion.

"It's times like this I wish my dad had been interested in more than just flowers and useful plants. I have no clue what to do about them." Kizashi had never taken an interest in _anything_ dangerous, though he'd taught Sakura plenty about gardening from transplanting to deadheading but beyond spotting poison ivy and its cousins at a glance he'd never spoken much about the more nefarious sorts of plants.

'I wouldn't go as far as to imply it's not _useful_. I'm sure it suffices _perfectly_ at what it's good at.' Sasori noted the word choice she had used when referring to her father. 'Had.' as in past tense and she had never mentioned her parents before. "A gardener, I presume?" Every question had purpose and a desired destination in mind.

"Well, he did a fair bit of that too in his spare time, but he was a Botanist by career, mostly in the realm of conservation methods." Sakura held out the book to return it a tepid smile in place.

"You keep speaking in the past tense." Sasori pressed, pushing the book back in her direction. "It's yours." other than the illustrations it wasn't of much use when he'd long memorized the contents.

"Oh, thanks." Sakura finally settled into her seat, book resting in her lap. "I speak that way because they, my mother and my father died about five years ago."

Reflexively Sasori can feel his mouth forming the words everyone seems to say when someone dies even when they had nothing to do with the events at all. "Sorry." It's short and simple, he doesn't feel anything saying it, but he knows it's the social expectation.

"He was a botanist, worked mostly in the field of conservation methods." She's gotten used to condolences over the years. "Things happen, you never really know when you're going to go or when it will be someone you love." Sakura thumbed at some pages, unable to keep herself from fidgeting. "I got 21 really, really good years with them and that's better than some people get."

'She talks so easily about it.' Was it because he was her doctor or because it was her nature? In his own youth, speaking about the death of his parents was neither invited nor expected by his Grandmother or those whose company he fell into at an early age. Wartime simply wasn't a place for feeling. 'And it was pointless.' speaking didn't bring the dead back to life.

When she's feeling particularly bitter about events Sakura reminds herself of that there were people who didn't get parents who loved them, there were some parents who died before they saw their child grow into adulthood. "1.35 million deaths a year worldwide and they just happen to be among them." She supposes it's time that allows her to say it like that, flat and rehearsed because she's become used to saying them in the same way she's used to hearing apologies.

A part of Sasori expected tears, not the simple recitation of facts but he's appreciative not to be faced with them. "A car accident." he assumed, knowing the statistics.

"Right in one." She'd ended up on a page about Destroying Angels. "Someone ran a red light and the rest as they say is history." At the time the coroner had said it was quick but they never let her see the bodies and knowing what she now knows about how things like that worked Sakura couldn't help but wonder if that had been a white lie.

Sasori had reached his desired end in his line of questioning and began in another direction. "I overheard you on the phone, is it related to your newest case?"

"Ah no, still waiting on an identification on that...plastinate." Clock, whatever the hell Hiroku had turned a body into. "Apparently there has been a massive upswing in gang violence over the last week or so and fresh bodies take precedence as the current policy stands. The trip to Miyagi is personal business."

'Yes, I do imagine the local Yakuza are all out of sorts now that a Head has gone missing.' They were probably suspicious that it had been the work of a rival force, or even one of their as they descended into chaos. "Taking a vacation?" Sasori wondered pleasantly, long fingers steepling over his knee. Admittedly he found satisfaction in knowing he was the one who stirred such trouble.

"Something like that." Sakura fought not to grimace because chasing down leads on an off the books series of bizarre incidents she had personal ties to was a god awful vacation. 'I'd rather go to Disney World.' but somehow, she doubted that would be happening anytime soon.

"I hope it's enjoyable then." Although he couldn't imagine what there was of interest in Miyagi of all places. It was virtually in the sticks of Fire country. "Now back to business. You never did tell me what you saw in the Uchiha case file." he hadn't forgotten her mention of it days ago.

"Do I really have to go into the specifics of seeing people I knew from my childhood all...chopped up?"

It probably _was_ asking too much of her to do that. " No, I think I would like to hear about how you found out they were dead. How were you told? Don't make that face, this isn't me fishing for sordid details." That was a lie. "Your nightmares started because Shimenawa reminded you of that time, you can't sleep because whatever it is you _don't_ want to talk about is at the back of your mind. What is the point in having a psychologist if you aren't going to talk to them?"

Sakura sighed and held up her hands haltingly. "Alright, you made your point." It felt like speaking about it would rub open raw wounds but given current circumstances the wounds were already open and seeping. 'And if that's the case there is no point in trying to preserve a state that no longer exists. but...there are just some things I am not comfortable discussing.' like snakes, and how they...how she _thought _they might tie into everything.

It wasn't a particularly long story. She'd been out in the woods that night because she was an overachiever working on some constellation map for a school project and it _had_ to be perfect. Sasuke's house had been about half a mile through the woods in one direction and Naruto's in the other. Kakashi's place was in the middle of all three of them which was how he ended up with a broken window and 3 kids working off their debt by washing and walking dogs for a summer. 'But that had nothing to do with that night.' Sakura wasn't sure why she mentioned it. "We had this stupid tree-house that Kakashi helped us build that I was camped inside, I was supposed to be back home before 10."

Sakura couldn't remember the exact time that it happened anymore but it had been dark and so far out into the woods the only real light had been from the moon and its compatriots. Her lantern had been dim in comparison as she scribbled over a piece of paper that kept trying to roll up on her. Living where she did she'd gotten used to the miscellaneous sounds a forest made, creaking tree limbs, the scuffle of leaves or little animals scampering about. "But no matter how comfortable you get in the woods at night there is always that lingering sense that something is off.'' it was probably an instinctual thing from the days of old.

Sasori didn't interrupt her retelling, focused on her face and the words that she spoke. The expression he saw was like the look of someone falling into a dream and he found himself studying the fan of her lashes and the almond shape of her eyes. It's the artist in him that makes his pen move over the paper he's meant to take notes on but finds himself sketching what he sees instead. Lesser men would lose her words in their diverted focus, but not him.

So every now and then she'd found herself paused,the work of placing points on paper and connecting dots while she tried to pinpoint the pieces of Orion that made up the White Tiger of the West forgotten as she looked to the forest floor below. She'd started to wish she'd brought Naruto along even if it meant she wouldn't get a thing done. 'I still wish I had.' if he'd been there maybe she wouldn't have felt so crazy, maybe she wouldn't be feeling so lost now. "At one point I looked up and I saw Sasuke, or I thought I did." His back was always hard to miss clothed in that old clan symbol he was always so proud of but the moon seemed to put a spotlight on it that night.

Sasuke used to carve his family crest into trees like a guide post so the three of them always knew which way to go through the forest. 'But he always put a lucky number 7 in them too.' because that was who the three of them had been after they broke Kakashi's window on the 7th day of July. "I called his name but he didn't answer, climbed down to follow him…but I guess my foot snagged something in the dark because I fell and busted my head and didn't wake up until morning, when I dragged myself home the next morning my parents weren't mad but everything had changed." It felt like there were gaps in between but she could never recall them.

Word got around fast, especially when it involved a famous family like Sasuke's. Everyone had been whispering about it by morning. "I told them what I saw in the woods, Kakashi too, I even tried talking to the police but…"

"The evidence and Itachi's confession already said you were wrong." Sasori finished. He had no way of knowing one way or the other if what she said happened was the truth or just some memory created by her brain to cope with something traumatic in her youth. 'But I do know there are ways to stage a crime scene to make it read the way you want it too.' and that if Sakura at 10 or 11 was anything like she was _now _made it very hard for him to believe she just imagined it. 'Then again the mind does strange things.'

"Right. So for a few years after that I was known as the girl who saw a ghost." Sakura laughed slightly because she sometimes wondered if seeing a ghost was a lot less weird than being the girl who kept writing a person everyone thought was a murderer, looking for answers. It felt like her teeth were biting into the side of her cheek all of a sudden and she found herself glancing to the hourglass full of red sand. "You never flipped it. What time is it?"

There was a narrowing of his eyes as they glanced at the device. Sasori had never forgotten before. Not with previous patients, not even with Deidara. Time was precious to him and he hated to spend more of it then necessary on others. A glance at his watch told him they were well past the end time. " 6:30." he shrugged off the odd occurrence. 'Gathering information takes time.' especially when one was trying to be subtle about it.

Sakura took the news less easily. "Shit!" she sprung from her seat, gathering her belongings. "I've got a train to catch."

"You're leaving straight from here?" He watched her, half amused at the struggle Sakura found herself in as she tried to stuff the book he'd given her back into her bag.

"Yea, it's good that the station isn't too far away...Any helpful insight before I go?" She asked jokingly because there really was nothing she imagined he could say.

"Stop drinking coffee."

"That's not helpful at all and just, _no_." Sakura scoffed at the statement, halfway out the door.

"Haruno, when you get an identification-do give a call." Sasori watched as she paused in her departure to look at him. "I like to see things through to the end." He shrugged, a lazy rolling of his shoulders. "And I am curious."

Something cheeky flashed across her face, the grin displayed a mischievous dimple in her cheek. "Sasori, is that your way of saying you want to catch a Serial Killer with me?" she teased.

That look was more pleasing than the one before. "You could take it that way." there was no time to start on a new sketch.

"I'll give you a call when I know something then." Sakura waved and was gone.

Its reflex that his hand moved in the motions of farewell.

When she was gone Sasori dug out the billing information that listed her address and committed it to memory. 'The amount of personal information people give out without thinking about it is often astounding.' To him it's only fair play that if Sakura was set on poking and prodding at the parts of him he kept hidden and separate from the outside world that he did the same to her. The more he knew of her, the more he understood about her the better he could mislead her.

Even in the hour long drive from his office to her house Sasori didn't think much about why he _wasn't_ planning her death when he was a man who firmly believed in having a plan to murder whoever he met. 'Things are thus far more interesting with her around.' and while he preferred to make art out of those he considered _challenging _he can't think of a thing to do with Sakura if that became the case. 'I'm sure something will come to mind.' inspiration was seldom lacking.

Sakura's house was set a good distance apart from anyone else's, a thin strip of gravel leading the way to a house surrounded by trees. It's hidden enough that he doesn't worry about the automatic lights switching on. Sasori did find himself a bit _bemused_ by a singular lawn flamingo hidden by a hydrangea bush as he walked the perimeter of the house. It was like she didn't want it to be seen but couldn't get rid of it. 'Two stories and a basement.' he surmised, pulling the needed implements out of his inside pocket.

Picking the backdoor lock was as easy as flossing and there was no security system to disconnect. For someone in the field of work that she was in, Sakura's house was pathetically insecure and Sasori was almost disappointed as he slipped inside, but not before slipping on a pair of shoe covers to keep from tracking anything in or out of the house.

The kitchen he found himself in was clean, a few pairs of shoes kicked chaotically to the side of the door and a pair of fuzzy green house slippers off to the side. The state of the kitchen was bare and it led him to the conclusion that the reason he saw her eat so much was because she couldn't or didn't cook for herself. The supple leather gloves he wore didn't creak as he opened cabinets and found his theory well founded. There was a lot of rice and prepackaged food on hand but not much else and he proceeded to the next room.

Sasori was not a man who was easily startled and the golden eyes that met his gaze just weren't up to snuff, he stared back into them unblinkingly as the cat hissed and arched from the spot it'd been sitting, stretched out on the Butsudan like some guardian beast. He remembered the sloppy, flirty officer Sakura knew had mentioned she owned one but he was more interested in the pictures behind the cat and simply grabbed it by the scruff before it could get any brave ideas.

There was always a choice when one predator faced a larger one. To fight or accede when escape was no longer an option. The cat gave a low yowl from in its chest as it went limp in his hold. "Good." He patted it's head and set it on the floor out of his way, pleased that it simply coiled beneath a coffee table and glowered at him in the dark.

It was always said that one of the hallmarks for a creature like him was cruelty to animals, but he'd never found skinning and flaying the small to be of interest in his youth, not when he'd gone straight to killing people at eight. 'Of course they also say bed-wetting to a late age is a sign.' and he never had _that_ problem either. All that really did was prove that he was something the world had never seen before, an outlier.

As if to prove that point evolution had provided him with preternaturally good eyesight in the dark, a blessing given his chosen hobby that often involved lurking in shadows. As such Sasori didn't particularly need the lights to see the photos on the altar. In them he can see the pieces of Sakura that her parents had passed on; her mother's slim build and eyes, her father's hair and the beaming smile. There were differences though, she wasn't nearly as thin as her mother who looked almost skeletal. Sakura seemed to have inherited part of her father's more muscular build. There was a necklace hooked over one of the photo frames, a pink stone shaped like a flower dangling from the chain, likely carved from rose quartz. 'I hadn't taken her for the religious sort but it could simply be the remnants of tradition.' The butsudan was well dusted and the fruit in the offering bowl was fresh.

It didn't take much perusal through the living room to find a series of meticulously maintained photo albums, labeled by years and it was as he was flipping through the one he calculated to include Sakura's earliest years that he came to a realization. 'This house isn't one she went out and bought. It's _always_ been her home.' The picture of her parents standing out front and holding her, wrinkly and pink, fresh from some hospital and wrapped tight in a blanket said it all. 'Which means it's the _same_ house she came home to after the Uchiha massacre.' It told Sasori that for whatever reason Sakura could not let go of the past or simply didn't wish too.

'Is she clinging to the comforts of her childhood or can she not move forward?' There had been nothing comfortable about his own youth and so it was easy to cut ties with it when things no longer suited him. Sasori went through the photos, year by year looking at the changes and events displayed. Birthdays and Holidays, missing teeth and the ones that replaced them in time. There were pictures of Sakura with a blonde girl with blue eyes at an early age, giddy faces pressed together, close as could be. Later as she got older there was a blonde boy and another one, dark haired and dark eyed that he surmised to be Sasuke.

In those later photos, if Sakura weren't looking annoyed at the fair-haired boy she was smiling, eyes always on Sasuke like a little girl infatuated but his eyes were never on her. He always looked off to the side or at the other boy, poised in the midst of an argument. Sometimes even Hatake was there, one hand on her head, another arm hugging the neck of the blonde boy in an almost-choke hold.

Sasori didn't have memories of his childhood immortalized, at least not in his own possession. He'd left it all behind and the older he'd got the less he allowed himself to be captured in a lens. Going further through the years, Sasuke disappeared, the seemingly unlimited happiness Sakura displayed in her youth dimmed, her smiles less wide and all consuming. The same change was reflected in the blonde boy at her side-the one whose blue eyes always seemed to be on her in the way that her's had been on Sasuke's.

It wasn't as if all joy had fled from them, it was simply tempered. 'Likely by the realization that death was real, very permanent and _always _so very close.' Sasori learned that early himself. Earlier then they had. There were pictures of her in school uniforms and martial gi's-which explained kicking through a door. 'She practiced from an early age. Of course she'd learn to be proficient.' Even if she was tiny. There were others of her standing in arena's for tournaments or on stage at some function or another as she accepted awards ranging from spelling bees to science fairs.

'Overachiever indeed.' Sasori thought by the time he had finished looking through them. It was something that he liked about her, something that they shared when he thought about it, only his achievements weren't commemorated with snapshot photography. The albums were returned in exactly the same position he'd removed them from, right down to the canted angle that he would have hated in his own home.

He moved through the home like a wraith, coming across a windowsill in a side room that was crowded with well tended plants. It was there that the secondary smell that seemed to cling to Sakura was strongest and looking at the large, silvery-white blooms he finally knew what it was. 'Gardenias.' Flowers always had meaning though they differed from culture to culture. 'Purity, love and refinement.' there were others too, innocence and protection and he found each of them to suit the things he knew about her.

Up the stairs there were four doors, Sasori opened the first and knew whose it was at once. A rumpled bed with white linen, green walls and more gardenias on the dresser. Nail polish crowded on the bureau and books spilled beneath her bedside table. Dante's Inferno sat at the top, below some monthly released Scientific journals that covered a variety of topics from medical advances to those in the realm of physics. Tossed among the unmade bed was a translated version of Petrarch's Il Canzoniere. 'She probably carried on from Dante to one of his contemporaries.' Perhaps she would move onto Boccaccio's Decameron next, either way he approved of the reading material and wondered if the book he'd given her had been among their number until recently. [1]

Opening the bedside table gave him a view of the weapon inside along with a collection of single wrapped sweets, It was an odd assortment. 'A Beretta m9 and chocolate.' Sasori thought in amusement, finding it might explain why she didn't bother with more security. 'Although it's only any good if she's quick on the draw.' and he personally found a knife to be better in most cases. The drawer slid shut without sticking.

One of the doors in the hall led to a bathroom, the counter cluttered in the same way her dresser had been but with different items and a bra hanging out of the hamper. 'Lace of all things.' Sasori wondered at the conflicting pieces of her nature; Science journals, martial arts and hidden guns, flowers, poetry and lace. The more he uncovered the more absorbed he found himself at her dualities.

What he came to recognize as her parent's room was left largely untouched, dusty even. Boxes sealed and stacked but unmoved as a testament to his earlier belief that she seemed to cling to her past while he had long left his behind. The next room was an office with bookshelves, the state of it much the same as the clutter and disorganization he saw at her desk at work and throughout the house.

There was only one place left to look by the end of it all. 'The basement.' Sasori mused, staring at the door he had bypassed in the kitchen. He'd saved it for last because it would be on his way out of the house and often the place where people put what they wanted forgotten. 'Or hidden.' on his way down he flicked on the lights, because as good as his eyes were it was much darker below level without the outside light filtering in through windows.

A washing machine and dryer, more unlabeled boxes and the random assortment of items most basements seemed to collect peppered about the wide space but what utterly arrested his attention was the pushpin board on one wall that was cluttered with photos. At some point Sakura had run out of the normal sort of square sticky notes and had resorted to using cartoon cat ones that were in some circles meant to be _cute_. There were dates and places scrawled over them and red circles on the photos. 'Snakes…' Sasori realized after his eyes flicked over the board. 'It seems like one serial killer isn't enough for her.' and of all people it had to be _that_ man.

The amount of them was so great that Sakura had run out of space on the board proper and resorted to taping her discovery along the surrounding wall. 'He always was prolific with a predilection for chaos.' seeing it mapped out before him only proved that point. Sasori knew all too well the figure behind Sakura's dangerous little side diversion. 'What, exactly turned her onto his tail…' because of Orochimaru's anarchic brand of _fun_ the patterns were seldom picked up by those in law enforcement. 'And those who do know of it turn a blind eye if they want to safeguard their own life or the lives of those they claim to love.'

There was a folder at the workbench still thrown open and after a few flipped pages he laughed for the first time in what felt like forever. It was a quiet, seldom heard thing that shook his wiry form. "So that's it." His suggestion that she go looking into the past brought it all to bear. "Oh, poor girl." Sasori sighed. It was a dangerous pursuit she'd set herself upon, her chasing him at her job and Orochimaru in as her pastime. 'And I'll bet this is what Miyagi was about in the end too.'

Now he knew the implication plaguing her, that the boy of her memories was alive. 'And he likely is...but not as she knew him.' Those that Orochimaru held _close_ were seldom unchanged by their time at his knee, the weak minded ones broke easily and the rest took longer but fell all the same to his persuasions. He had carried such intentions against Sasori once and the realization had earned an unending enmity.

"But this does present an opportunity…" The man spoke to the empty air, eyes gleaming. "Why not use her pursuit of snakes to throw her off my own tail?" The idea of having to kill Sakura was even_ less_ appealing than before, the amusement she provided aside they now shared a common enemy. 'And I did say that there was blood between us...' and now there could be more of it.

The idea was firm in his mind, a decision made long before he ever arrived home after making sure everything in Sakura's home was _exactly_ as it had been before he arrived. Basking in the delight of his discoveries there was a thought at the edge of his mind, noting the differences between their two abodes soon after crossing the threshold of his own. 'Her's is just as empty as my own aside from the cat.' though Sasori kept pets of his own, less soft and more confined as they were. 'Yet something about her house seemed...fuller.' It was probably all the clutter.

The good mood that he still found himself in led Sasori to an art gallery he frequented, the following Monday. Sometimes he went to buy something that caught his eye but often just to look and pick apart the things he disliked as was his caustic nature.

"I'm telling you, it's ugly."

He knew that voice and _well_ but found himself somewhat surprised to hear it in such a place.

"Hag, it costs more than your parents house."

And he knew that one too. Sai was the establishment's curator and an artist in his own right, often focusing on traditional styled ink paintings.

"You say that like it's supposed to make it look better Sai and don't call me that! I'm not old yet..."

The two of them were standing in front of some abstract painting in a positively putrid shade of yellow. Sakura had been_ right_ to call it ugly and that was withholding Sasori's own opinions on abstract art, a form that he viewed unkindly. Still lifes, portraits, landscapes, the genres that mimicked the natural world and human form was where his preferences laid.

"Should I return to calling you ugly?"

Sasori snorted because he really wasn't sure where Sai got _that_ idea unless he was purposely being contrary, which was not unlike the man's nature. 'There is nothing displeasing about her face.' most things symmetrical tended to be attractive and her coloring was pleasant, shades of pink in subtle and striking variations and a pair of arresting green eyes.

Even her limbs, lithe and deceptive as they were, were well formed to that end; there wasn't much of her that Sasori could see that he found objectionable besides the way she threw her belongings about. The sound of his disagreement must have caught Sai's attention, or maybe it was the sound of the door and change in the air, the ashen skinned man was surprisingly perceptive about environmental shifts.

"Dr. Akasuna." Sai greated with the tilt of his head and a well rehearsed smile that always seemed too stretched to be genuine. It never bothered Sasori, not when he was just as used to faking such expressions himself.

The only difference was Sasori was better at it by _far_.

Sakura's head turned from the painting, the straw of her iced-coffee sticking out of her mouth. "Wah?" she had to do a double take, not only because of who she was seeing but how she was seeing him. 'I thought he slept in suits.' she wouldn't exactly call the clingy black turtleneck he was wearing casual, or even the well-fitted slacks but it was certainly different.

'I'm beginning to question if she even owns any pants.' Sasori wondered if he should have looked through the rest of her dresser and closet when he had the chance. The skirts he saw were always black but she seemed to own tops in a variety of colors, the current one being a dark pomegranate red. It reminded him of her in that bathroom, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood in someone other than herself, white shirt turning red. His head nodded in greeting.

"If you spill that on something I hope you're prepared to be destitute for the rest of your life." Sai reminded the still shocked woman at his side. He'd already broken the rule by letting her walk in with the drink. 'Friends are supposed to make exceptions for friends.' but he wasn't going to foot the bill if she destroyed someone else's work.

"I didn't take you for an art enthusiast." Sasori hadn't thought of her as one for Petrarch either. 'There are a lot of things I'll have to reevaluate when it comes to her.' he could admit that much, each time he met her something seemed to shift.

"She wouldn't know the difference between Hans Holbien and Édouard Manet." Sai said point blank. "How exactly do you know one another?" his eyes flicked between the two, looking for some invisible thread.

"We're…" Well, Sasori was the one who had said it first. "Friends." Sakura finished but then felt bad because Ino knew a different truth and the two of them would eventually put their heads together and then Sai would know she hadn't been completely honest. "He's also my doctor."

"Oh, this is the shrink Ino was talking about." Sai cupped his cheek thoughtfully. "Yes I suppose he is to quote her; hot." he placed a hand on her shoulder. "I do hope your mental state improves."

"My mental state is just fine, yours is the o-" Sakura made a frustrated noise and cut herself off, deciding not to touch what was arguably a hot potato. "Right...anyways, I don't know specific artists but I know what looks nice! I liked that one guy's work...uh, Waterhorse…" it was something like that.

Sasori only blinked once at the word _hot _being used to describe him because he was long used to commentary on his looks-though usually in more eloquent terms than the modern slang younger people favored. "Waterhouse." he corrected. "And his are certainly better than this." he pointed at the painting. 'How many more people in our circle our shared?' So far Shizune and Sai were commonalities between them.

"It looks like pus." Sakura mumbled.

"Accurate."

"Yes but the artist is popular." Sai intoned. "And that drives foot traffic...Hag, you never did tell me where your sudden interest in art came from." She'd just shown up in the middle of the day, abuzz with questions. 'But we got rather distracted before I could answer any of them.'

Sakura took a sip of her coffee as she squinted at the painting a bit more. She really just did not see the appeal. "I had a thought while I was away, about my newest case. Works of art are often allegorical in nature and can have hidden meanings-feelings they're meant to invoke in the onlooker. It's just I don't really know _if_ I_ know_ how to read what I'm looking at correctly." she rambled, ripping apart the pus-painting was better than thinking about Miyagi. 'Funny how the person who compiled the file died in a mysterious car crash, where surprise surprise a white serpent was found in the passenger seat.' and by funny she meant horrid.

Everything about it was piling up in a way she didn't want it to and soon it would be impossible for Sakura to keep looking and do nothing.

Sasori took a long look at her face, turning the words over in his mind. 'What feelings…?' they'd never been on his mind while he worked and he couldn't help but wonder what else she'd gotten into her head. 'And what more did she learn on her little trip, if anything?'

"Ah well, for someone like you-"

Sakura's phone was ringing and she pressed a hand against Sai's mouth to silence him. "Haruno here." she said upon picking up the call, the easy, happy disposition of her face sobered as the person on the line spoke. "Uhuh, I got it." she ended the call after clicking away a note on the device. "Well, Sasori, you asked to be informed when I got an identification…and lucky you, you're here just as it came in." She flashed the name and information she'd typed into the phone.

"Isn't Shinobu Masahisa the head of Tachigata-Gumi's ?" Sai wondered, recalling the name from one of Ino's many diatribes on the state of crime within the city. [2]

"Yep." Sakura pocketed her device. "I've got to head downtown, maybe next time we can finish talking."

"You're going to go downtown into gang territory to question his underlings?" Sai frowned, because while yes, Sakura's job dictated she would occasionally be in danger he never liked to think about it and he certainly didn't want her to go alone.

"...Yes?" Sakura didn't seem to see a problem.

"I want to go." It wasn't a request that slipped out of Sasori's mouth. "I told you, I like to see things through from start to finish." he said upon the startled look she gave him.

"What? No way! That's dangerous." Sakura tossed her empty cup into a trash can with a brief laugh. Taking him would be crazy.

"It's no more dangerous than when I went with you to Shimenawa's home. You'll just have to protect me if you're so worried. You have a gun-that's your job, no?" Sasori couldn't stop the slow curve of his lips, because the situation _was_ humorous to him. He certainly didn't need her protection and he was by no means concerned with _danger._ "Or do you doubt your skills in that area?" It was the tension in Sakura's jaw and the widening in her stance that told him he had her exactly where he wanted her.

"You should take him. At least this way if something happens and your hands are full he can call for backup...or provide emergency first aid." Sai's fake smile was gone and something sadder, more genuine filled his face. That in the end, was what made Sakura agree. She hated to see that look on anyone's face; worry.

'The last part might be useful.' Sakura reasoned with herself as she propped her hands on her hips and faced Sasori. "You'll follow directions?"

"Of course." Provided they made sense.

* * *

[1] Dante and Petrach had a lot of similarities, both were in love with women they couldn't be with and admired from afar. They sort of defied that love and the objects of their affection through their writing. For Dante it was Beatrice his muse, for Petrarch it was Laura for whom he wrote a lot of poetry-the primary themes being that love was desired but also painful. He's probably one of the greatest influences on love poetry known.

The Decameron by Boccachio was where the inspiration for Chaucer's Canterbury tales essentially came from, a bunch of people fleeing the plague traveling around telling stories and songs to one another...it was rather risque for what some would expect from the time period but then again we know that a lot of people back then weren't as pious as they wanted to be portrayed.

All of the mentioned books range from just before the Black Death swept Europe to the beginning of the renaissance which started after it.

[2] Taking place on a continent in between Japan and China, they too have their own Yakuza groups. Sasori likes a challenge so of course he went for the boss and now his underlings are a mess and Inter-Yakuza violence is on the rise.

Dun Dun Dun, PLOT ADVANCEMENT. And like a lot of it.

Sasori's been creeping in Sakura's house and knows what her side hobby is and everything else. It's kind of scary to think about how the information we give out on medical forums and releases could be used in the right/wrong hands, and what a person can learn about you by moving through your house unseen.

Sasori is drawing comparisons between himself and her and contrasting their differences

If you look close you may see the seeds of a new story because the Sasosaku ideas have no chill, I'm writing it as backlog and will withhold on releasing it until I get a little further in other stuff. -Real struggle- that being said I'd love to see your guesses. -rubbing hands gleefully- I find that at least part of it is kind clear.

I really wanted this chapter to be done on the 28th but I was seriously sick and throwing up over the weekend (Don't worry it's not THE VIRUS™...) it just happens to me every now and then...I ended up laying on the floor and writing my super long Sasori post for tumblr which I left a lot of stuff out of because I was incredibly miserable typing away at it. Maybe I will go back at some point and flesh it out more.


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